


Refuge

by esama



Category: Final Fantasy VII, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Friendship, Gen, Post Advent Children, Pre-Revenge of the Sith
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-03-30 03:03:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3920515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cloud goes out looking for an UFO.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Proofread by Darlene

Cloud let the engine wind down slowly, leaning back on the seat of his bike as he scanned the terrain. He was just a rock throw away from the Zolom Marshes and though the creatures of the marshlands weren't really a match for him, he still rather hoped he didn't need to go that way. He might be able to handle the bogs but his bike couldn't.

After a moment of just looking, Cloud pushed his goggles up and to his forehead before reaching for his waist and unclipping the binoculars he'd brought with him. They were an old ShinRa infantry model, from a time before the standardised infantry helmets – so they were basically better than anything currently available. The zoom function stuttered a bit – the jury-rigged battery didn't quite work as well as the old Makocells used to – but it still gave a decent magnification.

Good or not, though, they showed very little new. The marshlands of the Kalm-Midgar plain were as dirty, as polluted, and as disgusting as they'd ever been, nothing interesting in sight. He couldn't even see any movement, but then again, it was daytime. The Zoloms only came out to play during the night.

Shaking his head, Cloud lowered the binoculars and scanned the area with his eyes alone before fishing out his phone and dialling Reeve. "There's nothing," he said the moment the call was picked up. "You sure it was here?"

"I've confirmed it with Cosmo Canyon and Rocket Town," Reeve's smooth voice answered. "We've all got a bit of variation, but we've all pinned it down to the same area. Whatever it was, it should be there."

"I don't see anything," Cloud said, grimacing in the direction of the marshlands. He had a bad feeling that the reason he couldn't see anything was because the damn thing had of course landed in the one place he would rather not go. "How big is the thing?"

"Hard to say. Big enough to make it through the atmosphere intact. There's nothing? No fires, no crater, nothing?"

"There's nothing," Cloud repeated and scratched at his cheek. "There's bit of fog over the marshes though, might be hiding it," he added and then hesitated. "Do you really want this thing, Reeve? I mean… it's probably just a rock."

"It's probably _not_ just a rock," Reeve said, without remorse. "Cosmo Canyon reported that it moved in _abnormal_ ways before entering the atmosphere and when Cosmo Canyon calls something abnormal, it's usually is. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to find it."

Cloud sighed. "I hate wetlands," he muttered. "You owe me a pair of boots and full maintenance on the bike and everything else I ruin in there, alright?"

"I'll pay the bill personally. Please call me back once you have something."

Cloud sighed and snapped the phone shut. This is what he got for quitting the delivery business – doing delivery favours for friends he sometimes rather wished he didn't have. Well, fuck it. "To the marshes we go, boo yeah," he muttered, and pushed the phone into his pocket, clipped the binoculars back to his belt, tugged the goggles back on, and then revved the bike.

He crossed over to the edge of the marshes swiftly, and there he pulled to a halt on the last solid piece of land and let the engine wind down. He had no intention of actually taking Fenrir into the swamp, no space rock was worth that much. Well to be honest, he didn't think it was worth trekking out to a swamp on foot either. Reeve was going to owe him so much booze for this.

With a sigh, Cloud opened the bike up, and started pulling his swords off their usual holsters, thrusting them to their straps on his back. Then, with final check up on the bike and on his own gear, Cloud left the bike standing at the edge of the swamp and after moment of considering the land, he took a few running steps and jumped, calculating that if he jumped from dry patch to dry patch he might minimise the amount of swamp water his boots would end up swallowing.

No such luck – after a second leap that propelled him good twenty meters forward, he sank knee deep into a wet mush and there went the water, into his boot.

"Great," Cloud muttered, struggling to find his footing as he pulled his foot free. The wet squelching noise was just… lovely. "I _hate_ swamps."

And he didn't even have any idea what he was looking for or how to find it, and more than a hundred hectares of marshes to cover. He really should've stayed in the delivery business – it had given him all sorts of handy excuses to give when old friends came calling for favours.

Still he was here, so he might as well find the damn thing. So he pushed onward, stopping occasionally to scan the area with the binoculars, and more than a dozen times to empty out his boots. So far nothing – but as he went onwards, he noticed a strange sort of agitation in the atmosphere. The marsh birds were attentively silent aside from an occasional warning call, and there were unusually high amount of monsters on the move for a place that usually didn't see that many humans about. Cloud even saw a couple Zoloms, slowly slithering under the marsh surface. Something _had_ stirred the marsh up.

And he was getting closer to it.

Well, at least it wouldn't be a wasted trip, Cloud thought grimly as he unsheathed one of his smaller blades, whirling it in hand. Then he jumped forward again, leaping over the submerged Zoloms and heading forwards. He wouldn't fight them if he didn't have to, but if they started something he'd be more than ready to deal with them, and anything else the marsh had to offer.

Still no fires, no craters, nothing – which made sense, if something had impacted the marsh it would've already been swallowed up. But the marsh wouldn't have gotten riled up over something as simple as a fiery rock being thrown at it – no, the tension spoke of something being _still there_. Cloud was kind of hoping the space rock was going to be big. Very big. Too big for him to carry. Then he could call Reeve, tell him to get the thing himself, and leave and call it a day.

Of course it wasn't anything that simple – it never was.

What he eventually found half sunken in the swamp, leaning on several crushed trees, wasn't exactly a space rock. It took a moment for Cloud to wrap his mind around what it was – and even then he got the name from it more out of science fiction than from reality.

"Well," Cloud muttered, staring. "This is new."

It was maybe around the same size as the Highwind – slightly bulkier near what Cloud assumed was the back end. That was as far as similarities with the airship went, though, because this thing obviously was meant for something a bit more straining than air travel. And judging by the looks of the holes along its side, sparking and smoking and surrounded by scorch marks, it had definitely been strained too.

It was also something _no one_ on the planet had the ability to manufacture.

Cloud eyed the thing for a while in a sort of bewildered daze before taking out his phone again and dialling Reeve. "Found it," he said, still staring. "It's a spaceship."

"… I beg your pardon?"

"It's a spaceship," Cloud said, half shrugging even though Reeve couldn't see him. "And it's sinking into the marsh."

"… Could you repeat that first part?"

Cloud sighed, pulled the phone from his ear, flipping it around and aiming it's camera at the rather startling scene the smouldering space ship made. He framed the shot in order to get most of it in frame, and then took the picture before sending it to Reeve.

"… I concur, it is indeed… a spaceship," Reeve said after a moment.

"Mm-hmm," Cloud agreed, tilting his head a bit. There was a sort of enormous burping sound and a bunch of bubbles broke the surface beside the spaceship as something gave under it. Shaking his head, he checked his bangle. He'd brought Sense with him more out of sheer cynicism than any other reason. Good thing he had. He fired it up. "Hundred and twelve meters in length, forty one in width and about… four hundred tons in weight. I'll need a summons to pull this thing out of the marsh, and I didn't think to bring any with –" he stopped, as more info filtered into his mind.

"Cloud?"

"There are live people on board," Cloud said, his whole demeanour changing. "I'm going to call you back, Reeve."

With that said, he ended the call and shoved the phone back into his pocket. He gave himself ten seconds to pull all of his swords loose and then fit the fusion sword together into its full form, before dashing ahead and leaping towards the ship, over a couple patches of somewhat dry grass and up a half collapsed tree and then up to the ship. Then, with the Sense intel still whirling around his head, he ran up the ship's hull until he found a spot where there was an empty space underneath – and then, charging Cross-Slash, he began cutting himself an opening into the ship.

There were forty two people on board, the Sense registered them all as human, and most of them near to death. Cloud didn't give himself a moment to wonder how or why or how it was even possible – there wasn't time. The ship was sinking, taking in the marsh water and sinking faster with it. Already, the Sense not so helpfully informed him that someone was drowning in the back end of the ship. Wonderful.

Cloud dropped down to what seemed like a corridor, half braced on the metal floor and half on the wall thanks to the tilt the ship was at. Inside the ship was dark aside from what seemed to be some sort of red emergency lights that flickered on and off, losing power. Well, he didn't need light, thanks to Mako and all the rest of the shit in his veins, so that was fine.

He took a breath and then, letting the Sense lead him, he started making his way to the closest life signature.


	2. Chapter 2

The first person Cloud found tried to pull a gun on him. At least Cloud assumed it was a gun – he didn't particularly pay attention to it, though, knocking it aside from the man's shaking hands and wordlessly grabbing the man by the waist and hoisting him over one shoulder. The second guy, who lay in the corner, only half conscious, also tried to pull a gun but his attempt was even worse than the first guy's. Cloud hoisted him over his other shoulder.

Whether it was their injuries or the fact that hanging on his shoulders they were both face to face with his fully assembled sword, they didn't put up much struggle as Cloud ran out of the corridor, back to where he'd cut his way into the ship, and outside. Or it might've just been the speed he used or the fact that at his level of strength it took a whole lot of force before Cloud even noticed someone putting up a struggle. In either case, he got them out of the ship in good time, leaving them on the most solid spot of land nearby and then jumping back to the ship.

The next two he recovered were both unconscious and thus didn't put up any sort of fight at all – the only reason Cloud even knew they were alive was because the Sense registered them as life forms. The first two he'd rescued, having gained some sort of footing on the patch of moss and grass, accepted them with suspicion and relief and Cloud relinquished his burden to them, but he didn't stick around to see what they did.

It wasn't until the fifth and sixth rescue that he realised that one, all of the people he'd rescued were men, two, they all wore similar white armour and the helmets were even creepier than ShinRa Infantry helmets and three… those men without helmets were all _identical._

Clones. He was rescuing fucking _clones_.

"Fuck it," he muttered and hoisted the two identical men over his shoulder. He'd started so he might as well keep at it, clones or not. He'd figure out whether it was the right thing to do later, once they were all safe. It was easier to deal away with living people than it was to revive _dead_ ones, after all and he didn't have the time to start figuring it all out now.

He did pay a little more attention to those men that pulled guns on him afterwards, though.

Rescues four to eight went like so, more or less without a hitch. Those people he'd gotten out who still could move around were tending to the unconscious ones every time he dropped them off and they didn't look like they were about to panic or do something stupid. The little patch of moss and grass he was dumping them on was getting kind of crowded, though, and the many feet trampling it was turning it into a wet soggy mess. So, for the rescue nine, with clones number seventeen and eighteen, Cloud dropped them on another, slightly less sodden island of moss.

And then something in the ship blew up, and the number of people still alive dropped from forty two, to thirty four.

"Fuck goddamnit," Cloud muttered. There was something squirming about in his boot and there was swamp water all the way up to his neck and his sword was probably getting rusty out here and there was _no time left_.

"Sir!" one of the men shouted from the first island. "Get us over to the ship – we can help!"

"You'll just get in my way!" Cloud snapped, not even bothering to try and figure out how the hell they even spoke the same language.

"Just onto the top of the ship, sir – we can receive the people you get from inside! It'll speed up the rescue."

"Tch," Cloud muttered, but leaped over and grabbed the two white armoured clones that were offering to help and then launched himself and them back over to the ship. He left them on top of the now more rapidly sinking ship, right where he'd cut the opening in, and then ducked back inside, racing through the tilting corridors in search for more survivors.

It did make things faster – rescues number ten and eleven went without a hitch, with Cloud hoisting the wounded clones up to their less wounded companions and heading back inside. The conditions in the ship were getting worse, though – the water was getting everywhere, there was smoke and fires inside and the air was getting unbreathable.

Thirty four dropped to thirty three, and then thirty two.

"Fuck this shit with a _sword_ ," Cloud grunted, coughing as he inhaled the acrid, metallic smoke. The rest of the people he was trying to find weren't as easy to get to as those he'd gotten out so far – there were still ten people left, and if he didn't work faster he was probably going to lose more of them. The ship was a goddamn maze and it didn't exactly help that it was teetering slightly and was going to fall over on its side any moment.

After a moment of trying to find a way into another compartment where he could feel three life signs, one of them precariously weak, Cloud gave up and just cut through the wall with his sword, tearing the enormous pieces of metal out of his way with his bare hands and then dragging all three of them out, piling them up and rushing out. One of them might've gotten knocked about a bit as he made his exit but hell, at least the guy would probably live.

Seven left now. Cloud hoisted the three to their fellows above and then redid the Sense. The renewed spell rewrote some of the info he'd gotten before and he muttered heated curses as he ducked below again, rushing down corridors and cutting through walls. The last seven were all in the same place, and the Sense was informing him that the place they were in was at the back of the ship, in the sunken part. It was near full of water, slightly radioactive, and about to blow up.

Engine room or something, he bet, and wasn't that just dandy.

Cloud's phone began to ring as he made his way downwards, and Cloud answered it with an annoyed; "I'm fucking _busy_ right now, Reeve!"

"Highwind is forty minutes out," Reeve said quickly. "Denzel and twelve WRO members are on board. How many people are we talking about?"

"Thirty – " Cloud answered and winced as another life sign went out. "Thirty one, now. Tell them to hurry the fuck up – and then keep their distance. This thing might blow."

With that said he hung up, tore his way through the final set of doors, and almost fell face first into swamp water. The room he'd landed in was a big one, with catwalks half sunken in the water, and what even Cloud could tell was some sort of power core. It was _glowing_. And it did not look happy.

"Guys, whatever the fuck you're doing, leave it. The ship's sinking," Cloud said to the clones, half of whom were injured, and the rest were, by the looks of it, trying to dive at some controls.

"We can't – the power core's destabilised, if we can't cool it down it might blow," one of the men snapped back at him.

"And who the hell are –"

Cloud ignored that, taking one of the injured ones and hoisting him up and to the drier corridor above – the guy looked like he was about to lose his fight with the swamp water and drown any moment. "How cool do you want it?" he asked – because people  don't stick around in rooms filling with water trying to stop something from blowing up unless the blowing up would assuredly kill them whether they stayed or not, and that wasn't good. "How does it need to be cooled?"

"The coolant's not getting into the infuser - the water's helping, a bit, but not enough," the helmeted clone answered.

"Would it help if I encased the thing in ice?"

It was testament to the severity of the situation and all the bullshit happening that the clone didn't even bother to ask. "Yes, it would," he said. "Might not stop it, but it will slow it down, and nothing we're doing is working."

"Then let's get you lot out of the water," Cloud said, already hoisting the next one up.

Between him and those clones who were still mobile, they got the power room evaluated in a couple minutes, after which Cloud jumped up to the drier corridor above, and then checked his bangle. Thank fuck he had Ice on him – he'd brought it in case he needed to stop fires or something, but for this…

He quickly fired the spell up, pulled his hand back and then threw it out at the water below. There was a wash of magic, running over the water's roiling surface like green smoke and then, in a flash… the whole thing was frozen into a solid block.

And it occurred to Cloud then, all too late, that he probably could've stopped the ship from sinking if he'd just frozen the swamp around it with Ice.

"Time to go," he said, taking the worst injured and hoisting them up to his shoulders. "You lot are the last ones alive, and we don't have the time to stick around."

"Yes, sir," the clone that had told him to freeze the room said, tearing his attention from the now solid block of ice that had taken over the entire room below. Between him and the rest of the more functional members of their party, they handled their other injured fellows and then they followed Cloud who'd pretty much torn a straight beeline from his impromptu entrance down to the power core.

The life signs dropped to thirty, just as they saw the light of day through the smoke and without pause Cloud jumped up and to the outside of the ship, dropping his burden and moving instead to the guy lying on the scorch marked metal, dead.

Cloud clasped a hand over the handle of his sword, and channelled magic through it. In its core his sword had all of his most used materia, and among them was Revive. It had been too late for most of the people down on the ship – the window to using Life was very small, more than twenty seconds and it just wouldn't work that well and not at all after a minute. But here, here he was quick enough.

He fired the materia up in all of its fully mastered power, and slammed the hilt of his sword – and with it a full Life2 – on the armoured man's chest. The man came to with a jolt and an audible gasp, nearly slamming his helmet against Cloud's cheek.

"What the –" one of the clones asked.

Cloud ignored that, and instead used Sense to check the ship again. No one left alive on board, and it had been too long to help any of them. Shaking his head, he powered his magic up again, and activated the Restore, which was hooked onto an All – the Cure3 washed over all of the people on top of the ship in a green shimmer, and there was a lot of astonished gasps and muttered curses.

"There," Cloud said, swinging the sword back to its magnetic clasp on the back of the straps that covered his back. "We should get off the ship before it falls over."

Which was precisely when the ship let out a terrific groan and abruptly tilted to its side, throwing them all off its back and into the damn swamp.

Fucking _fantastic_.


	3. Chapter 3

Cloud spent a moment – just a moment – cursing Reeve. Then he very reluctantly unclipped his sword off his back and let it fall to the bottom of the swamp – it was dragging him under water and even with super strength there was every so often a law of physics that still affected him – and that law was gravity under water. Without anything to push from and the water adding resistance, there was no way he could swim up with his weight being doubled by the sword, it just wasn't feasible.

He broke the surface with a streak of cursing, and over it he could hear the alarmed shouting of clones in the water and on the islands – and the groan of the spaceship. It loomed over them, enough of it still above water to look absolutely mountainous – and it was coming towards them. Or more specifically, falling towards them.

"Fuck this day, fuck it very much," Cloud grumbled and then drew a breath. "Everybody back up, now!"

"Five-four is under water!" someone shouted. "He's not going to make it!"

Cloud looked and only faintly saw the blurry white impression of an armoured figure beneath the murky swamp water. He took another breath and dived after the man, dragging him with very little finesse up to the surface and then hoisting the limp man at the other clones.

"Back up," he ordered. "I'm going to try freezing it."

Most of the clones just looked confused and alarmed – or those did, whose faces he could see. But the clones from the power room all quickly began backing away, shouting for their fellows to do the same and dragging those among them who couldn't quite swim right with them.

Judging by the looks of it, Cloud had healed a lot of broken arms and legs wrong. Denzel was going to chew him out for that.

He pushed the thought aside and faced the slowly turning space ship. He couldn't give the clones much time – the thing was coming fast and it was about to fall on all of them, there just wasn't that much time to waste. Still, he gave it as long as he could before activating the Ice materia once more, and channelling the magic of Ice3 into the dirty, muddy swamp water.

It was really fucking cold. Freezing water while floating _in it_ was never a good idea, but then being squished by a space ship was an even worse one. As the magic lashed out, it froze the water around Cloud's hands and then moved out in a wave, freezing the water in an outspreading wave until it hit the side of the space ship. Ripping his hands loose from the ice that had formed around his hands and wrists, Cloud recast the spell at a slightly different angle, and then yet another, his fingers going utterly numb as he froze the full length of the water at the ship's side.

That wasn't enough, though, so Cloud quickly climbed up on the ice shelf he'd made and then, all the while trying not to fall flat on his face on its slippery surface, running up and jumping on the ship. The thing was still moving – slower now, but it was moving – and it was a little tricky getting to the other side and only the benefit of Mako treatment kept him from falling off the thing many times.

Then, once he was on the other side, he started casting Ice3 on that side as well, dropping down to the ice shelf he'd created and then starting to run along the ship, casting Ice ahead of himself both to create a pathway to run on, and to encase the ship in a ring of ice.

Well not quite a ring – just enough until the ship stopped moving and stayed stationary, held suspended by a sort of framework of ice on both sides.

"I hate using Ice," Cloud muttered, rubbing his numb, frozen hands. It wasn't usually in his materia repertoire – he didn't really need elemental materia these days, and he preferred using Lightning to everything else, it just caused less damage to the surroundings than Fire and Ice. And also, Ice was _cold_ and he'd gotten enough of that in Nibelheim.

With blood flowing back to his hands, he leaped up to the ship's top and then down to the first ice shelf. While he'd been doing his bit to keep them alive, the clones had managed to fish their fellows out of the water, and were now regrouping on the sodden pieces of mud that used to be semi dry.

Cloud landed on the mud patch with a splat and he was beyond caring now – he had swamp water in his hair, now, and he just wanted to set the whole place on fire.

"Will that hold it?" the clone from the power room asked, peering at the ice surrounding the ship.

"For a while," Cloud answered. "Maybe an hour or two – it'll melt eventually and this place isn't exactly cold. Everybody okay here?"

"Zeke's not going to make it," one of the clones said, and Cloud turned to look. It was one of the earlier clones he'd rescued, one of the unconscious ones – his breathing was like sand paper, if it was made of flesh and blood and burned to bits. Another clone was crouched in the muddy moss beside the unconscious one, helmet under one arm and a grim look on his face. "It's his lungs," he said. "The smoke's burned them. We don't have the medicine and he doesn't have much time."

"Let's see if I can do something about that," Cloud said, reaching back and then he realised – his goddamn sword was on the bottom of the now mostly frozen swamp. "Excuse me for a moment," he added with annoyance, and then dived into the still freely flowing and utterly freezing water.

It was easy enough to find, even if the swamp water now had the clarity of 3 a.m. barf at Seventh Heaven – the materia in the sword as well as the actual material the thing was made of called Cloud right to it. It was imbedded half a meter in the damn swamp muck, though, and digging it out was only the start of the battle. He had to actually get it up from the bottom of the swamp.

Thankfully there was that handy dandy ice shelf he'd created.

Snapping the sword on his back, half blind, half drowning, and fully irritated, Cloud began climbing the rough edge of the ice, under water, until he made it up to the surface where he sputtered with great indignity for a moment before crawling up onto the ice and announcing to nobody in particular, "I'm going to _drown_ Reeve in this fucking crap."

Though maybe he should not be so hard on Reeve – the man had been right about the falling whatever, and if Cloud hadn't come there'd be a lot of very dead clones strewn about the swamp right about now. Still it was nice to have someone to blame.

Cloud leaped back to the mud island, ignoring the looks the clones were giving him – half suspicious as if they though he was nuts which, fair enough, and half polite acceptance that came probably from having been saved by a crazy person. He walked to the half dead clone and activated the Restore materia again.

The unconscious clone gasped, his body arching, and then woke up to cough, sitting up and bending over, blood splattering against the mud stained armour of his legs as he coughed out the burned bits of his lungs.

"There," Cloud said, and redid the spell just to be sure. "That should do it."

With the immediate danger over – the ship was sitting still in the ice, and though there was smoke lazily trailing out of its various holes it didn't seem like it was in a hurry to blow up – the clones took a moment to actually exchange looks.

"Sir, if you don't mind me asking – what the hell was that?" the clone from the power room asked.

"What was what – what was you crashing into a swamp or what was me busting in and saving your sorry asses?" Cloud asked, standing up and running a hand over his soaked hair. There was something… wiggling in there and he was trying to very hard not pay too much attention to it. "

"What was that you just did, with the sword?"

"Healing," Cloud answered, and clipped the sword to his back. He looked at the still coughing clone and winced a bit at the amount of damaged tissue the man was getting rid of. He'd burned out his lungs a couple of times – it was one of the worst things to have regenerate. "Just general regenerative healing – he'll still need to be checked by a professional, but he should stay alive until then"

"I see," the clone answered. He exchanged looks with a couple of the other clones and then stood up a little straighter. "Thanks for the assist, sir. We might've not made it without you."

"Which begs the question – how did you actually do that?" another clone asked, motioning at the ship.

Cloud shrugged, looking from one clone to another. Now that they didn't seem like they were in mortal peril, he took the time to appreciate that yes, they were all clones. All of them in identical armour, though with varying slashes of colour. Some had helmets, others didn't, and judging by the looks of the armour, they'd seen battle too. The clones themselves had very little variation, but the variation that was there was very pointed – a couple of them were older, others were young enough to be called _kids_ by the older ones. Some had scars – one had one over his eye and it looked like it had blinded the man in that eye. Quite a number of them had tattoos. There was also variation with hair styles – though most of them had short hair, the cut varied. A few had no hair at all.

Still they were very much _clones_ , identical in skin tone, height, apparent weight, facial features, eye colour and so on. Goddamn _clones_.

"Given that it was you guys who crashed on my planet," Cloud said slowly. "I think it's you who owe the answers. Who the hell are you lot and what the hell are you doing here?"

The clones exchanged looks – and then, hand gestures. They weren't very covert about it, and if Cloud had had the chance to look at the signals they exchanged he might've been able to decode it – but he let it go, let them have their nonverbal exchange.

After it, the clone from the power room stepped forward – and obviously, took charge of the group. "Sir, we're what remains of the second battalion of the 209th regiment of the Grand Army of the Republic," the Clone said. "We were on our way to rendezvous with the rest of the regiment in the Edortha System, but our ship sustained heavy damage in an earlier battle and we fell out of hyperspace just on the outer edge of your star system. With our hyper drive off line and systems failing we had no choice but to attempt for an emergency landing."

Cloud blinked. "Right," he said very slowly. "And you are?"

"I'm Lieutenant CT-1465, currently in charge of these men," the clone said, very nearly standing at attention.

"Right," Cloud said again. "Do you have an actual name?"

"… Ren, sir," the clone said.

"Nice to meet you, Ren, I'm Cloud. Now what are the chances of that ship blowing up, regardless of the ice?" Cloud asked, motioning at the ice trapped space vessel.

"I wouldn't place any bets on it, sir, but we should have an hour or two," the man said somewhat dubiously.

"Alright," Cloud said. "Evac is coming in approximately thirty minutes; let's hope we'll make it until then. If there's anything you need from there," he added, pointing at the ship. "Now's the time to get it."

"Yes, sir," Ren said, and turned to his fellow clones. Cloud watched for a moment as the man coordinated the group of men, both those on that island, and the ones from the other island near by – they seemed to have in helmet communications, judging by the way they went about it.

It was a little like watching the Infantry in action – except with lot less bumbling about, and lot more clean, no-nonsense efficiency. Whoever these guys were and whoever had trained them, they were good.

Or whoever had _made_ them.

Turning to face the ship again, Cloud fired up the Ice materia again and began creating an icy walkway from the muddy little island to the ice surrounding the ship, freezing a larger platform around the island while he was at it to give the clones a bit more room to move around. He then created another frozen walk way between them and the clones trapped on the other mud island. As he did it, he kept an eye on the troopers and considered the words, _battalion of a regiment of the Grand Army of the Republic._

Because that… that sounded rather huge. ShinRa's army hadn't exactly been small, at the height of its power – Cloud had been an infantry man in a battalion that was part of a regiment too, but that had been the fourteenth regiment out of twenty. If their number system actually ran from one all the way up to two hundred and past it, how big was their army? How many men – clones – there were in a regiment? And who the hell were they fighting against since they'd came from a battle?

And more importantly – what the hell did it say about _everything_ that these clones were human, spoke the same language as Cloud did, and came apparently from _outer fucking space_?

"Sir, we're ready," Ren said, with a group of four clones behind him.

"Let's go then," Cloud said. It would give him an opportunity to actually look around the ship and see what he could learn. And if nothing else, it was warmer and probably drier on board the burning space ship, than it was in the damn swamp.

From here on out, he was going to start carrying Fire materia again, and fuck the collateral damage.


	4. Chapter 4

The clones were pretty efficient, now that they weren't about to die. While Cloud did a lot of the heavy lifting – heavy being anything up to five hundred kilos after Lieutenant Ren had realised that he could handle that and more – the clones set up a quick and efficient transfer line, handing boxes and packets and a shit ton of guns hand to hand to get them out of the still burning ship as fast as possible. And with a couple cables they apparently just carried and could shoot out like grabbling hooks, they set up a pretty efficient system of getting everything from the ship down to the clones down below.

Cloud made some mental notes on their priorities which went along the line of weapons, rations, medical equipment followed by some specialised looking devices, backpacks which he soon after found were actually _jetpacks_ and after that, more weapons. These guys weren't messing around in the gear department, that was for damn certain.

"What about the bodies?" Cloud asked, while lifting up a crate full of what he was pretty sure was grenades.

Ren paused in the middle of sending another pack down the zip-line system they'd rigged up and glanced at him. "I suppose there's no time for ceremonies," he said then. "We'll remember them later, sir."

"Yeah, but…" Cloud glanced down to the corridor below. There were two dead clones there, who'd been respectfully moved to the side to give way for the transfer of goods. They were just _lying_ there, one in full armour, other with a few armour pieces missing.

They weren't returning to the Lifestream on their own – which was kind of weird, soldiers and troopers and people like that usually were a bit more accepting of their own mortality than that.

"Do you want me to give them a hand?" Cloud asked, looking up.

Ren just stared at him. "I'm not sure I follow, sir," he said slowly.

"Or… are you guys the burial type?" Cloud asked, scratching his neck. "I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. But I can send everyone here to the Lifestream in one go – and there's enough time for that."

The clone trooper paused at that and then he removed his helmet slowly. Underneath it, he looked like all the rest – his hair had been cut into a buzz-cut, and there was a scar running across his forehead, but aside from that he was identical to the others. "Lifestream, sir?" he asked, watching Cloud closely. "Do you mean… the Force?"

"The Force?" Cloud asked, glancing down as the other clones – Dux and Tank they'd introduced themselves as – pushed another crate of stuff towards him. He nodded to them and then hauled the thing up, pushing it beside the first crate.

"The energy of… life, I suppose – or that's at least what one Jedi told me," Ren said and dropped down to the corridor where Cloud was. "Something about it binding the galaxy together."

Cloud considered that. "I guess that's about right," he said slowly. He'd never thought about the galaxy as a whole having a Lifestream equivalent, but if there was life out there – and there was, not just these clones but the republic they came from, and there was Jenova too where ever _she'd_ come from – it made sense that there'd be Lifestream elsewhere. How else would there be life elsewhere?

"You can send people _into_ the Force?" Ren asked and the other clones paused to listen. "Even people who aren't Force Sensitive? Aren't Jedi?"

Cloud shrugged. "I got no idea what Jedi are, but yeah, sure. Anything that's living, pretty much," he said. "Or anything that was, anyway."

Ren considered that and him for a moment and then put his helmet back on. "Please hold for a moment, sir," he said, and touched the side of his helmet – probably for some private, in-helmet communication.

Cloud shrugged and took the opportunity to haul some more stuff up to be transferred down from the ship.

So far what he'd been able to figure out about these guys – aside from their rather alarming competency – was that they most certainly weren't unfamiliar with their companions dying. There was only the barest hint of grief about the way these guys handled their dead before they moved to accomplish the task of hauling gear up – which spoke of not only their adjustment to the deaths of their fellow soldiers, but also the fact that they were used to not having time to bury them.

They weren't callous about it, though. The motions of mourning were brief and as efficient as everything else they did, but they were solemn, marked and obviously the losses were deeply felt. There were brief salutes, grasping a dead clone by the shoulder, that sort of things. Cloud had seen Ren take the rank insignia off of one of the clones, which he figured meant that the clone was a superior officer or a close friend, one or the other. More special was the moment he'd seen Tank touch helmets with one of the dead clones, just for a moment, before moving on.

So, clones or not, effective troopers or not, they had feelings and they formed attachments to each other, in some cases more close than others. And they mourned. That put them way above Sephiroth's clones, that was damn certain. But then, Cloud was already pretty sure that these guys hadn't been made as some sort of attempt to resurrect or recreate some past greatness – no, they were a mass produced army made to order, and it showed in everything they did.

ShinRa probably would've done something similar, if they'd had the funds and the capability – maybe that was why ShinRa had dabbled with cloning tech in the first place. ShinRa infantry had been famously and hilariously incompetent, after all – mass produced clone army made of Sephiroth clones would've been a hell of a lot more effective. Not to mention terrifying. It was just as well that ShinRa's cloning attempts had been horrible failures at the best of times.

Still, it was a damn relief to see that the clones weren't… perfect clones. And that they weren't puppets. There was individuality, there were personal attachments and there was some level of initiative in all of them, in varying degrees. They weren't a creepy hive mind controlled by a single will like the Sephiroth clones had been. Thank almighty fuck.

"Sir," Ren said, coming to him as Cloud was lifting up another crate. "We'll finish unloading the gear and then, if you please… we would like you to do what you can for our brothers."

Cloud paused at that for a moment. _Brothers_. It rang with somewhat disturbing nostalgia, but it made sense, didn't it? It made sense then, and it made sense now. "Alright," he said, swallowing the shudder. "Just tell me when."

They finished the unloading of the gear, supplying every clone with a jet pack and enough weapons to, well, fight a war. There were a number of crates they'd gotten out of the ship which they couldn't exactly carry around with them like they could most of the gear, but Cloud promised it could be air lifted easy enough once their evac came. Highwind was old, these days, but it still had a decent enough cargo capacity.

With the crates and gear stacked up on the ice platforms, those clones that could move around easily helped their less mobile fellows to join the rest by the ship, where Ren had had all of the dead clones they could easily get to brought from the ship. They lay in a neat line, over twenty dead clones in their full armour, some of them more battered than others.

It was somehow… a very desolate sight.

With all of them there, Ren gave a very short and very solemn speech. "We're not strangers to losing our brothers, none of us," he said to the other clones, all of whom removed their helmets. "There's no hall of glory for us clones, no memorial to carve our names on. But we'll remember each other, we'll remember their names and we won't forget their actions. To brothers."

"To brothers!" the other clones answered, in perfect, military unison.

It was the strangest funeral crowd Cloud had ever seen, all of them in white armour, all of them identical.

He ignored the slight shudder creeping up his spine and instead knelt by the line of dead clones. It had been a while since he'd _helped_ this many dead along, but really… it wasn't as if it was something you could forget. Closing his eyes, Cloud clasped his hands together like Aerith used to, so long ago when she'd done this for all the enemies they'd killed along their quest to save the world.

Then he called for her.

The Lifestream surged under them, its tendrils reaching upwards to him. It didn't take much to nudge the power to claim the dead – it was what the Lifestream did, after all, most of the time without anyone needing to help it along too. Monsters and such returned to the Lifestream without anyone's aid, dissolving almost as soon as they died. People were sometimes harder though. People knew their mortality – and people fought against it.

Cloud opened his eyes at the first gasp he heard and watched as the line of bodies before them began to dissolve. He'd half expected for nothing to outwardly happen – the dead were all in armour, and the armour didn't really look organic enough to go with the bodies. A lot of the time, the dead left behind piles of clothes when they returned to the Lifestream. Not this time though.

The dead clones took their armour and gear with them, evaporating into glowing green before vanishing, and leaving behind nothing but empty ice.

As the last glimmer of green vanished, Cloud stood up and unclasped his hands. In the distance, he could hear the familiar echoing whir that signalled the approach of an airship – the Highwind was almost in reach. Glancing at the clones, he moved around them, leaving to them to their half confused mourning and took out his phone, dialling the captain.

"We're almost within range," Hilda said without bothering with hellos. "The lookouts have the ship in sight. That's one hell of a behemoth."

"Yeah. Be sure to keep at a distance," Cloud said. "Two hundred meters at least – the ship is sort of stable right now, but it'll probably blow up sooner or later. There's a power overload in the engines, or something like that. Cooling issue."

"Right," she answered grimly. "Where are you? Should I send the men down?"

"Nah, no need. Just pick a spot and we'll make our way to you. Is Denzel there?"

Without answering, Hilda apparently handed the phone over because the next speaker was a male one. "How many wounded?" he asked promptly.

"About twenty, though there's thirty one people here and most of them need a check-up at least. There's a lot of knocked heads, some guys have smoke inhalation, one almost burned out his lungs, and uh…" Cloud winced. "You'll probably have to re-break a few bones."

"You botched up a healing – _again_?"

"There were extenuating circumstances – mortal injuries and stuff. I'm sure you can fix it," Cloud answered, peering at the distance just as the Highwind started coming into view over the fog, its propellers clearing the mist around the ship. "Just be ready with the hammer, alright?"

"Great," Denzel answered. "Do I need to send some stretchers down?"

"We have some here," Cloud said, glancing at the very stream lined stretchers the clones had gotten from the ship. "But you probably should set up a proper sickbay."

Denzel hung up muttering curses at him, and Cloud pushed the phone back into his pocket, turning to look at the clones. They looked like they were about recovered, or at least like they were ready to put the grief aside again and get to work.

"I'll start creating a way," Cloud said, motioning towards the airship. "Better get ready to move the gear."

"Yes, sir," Ren said, with slightly sharper, slightly more respectful air to the near-salute he gave, and as they got back to work, organising the final retreat from the crashed space ship, Cloud was suddenly struck by a thought.

He'd saved the clones – or at least some of them. They were almost in the clear and soon they'd be safe, and out of danger. Soon they'd leave the burning wreck of a ship behind and if it did blow up, it would do so without killing anyone else. The rescue was about complete.

Now what the hell was he going to do with them?

_ _

[ _flowers for the fallen_ ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118551877816/flowers-for-the-fallen)


	5. Chapter 5

Next time Cloud happened upon a marsh, he would start out with Ice. He would throw it around without any restraint, and just… freeze every damn thing in his way, just turn it all to ice. It was obviously the best way to deal with marshlands.

Seemed to kill the bugs too, which was handy.

As the Highwind hovered above, Cloud froze the entire space around it, creating a wide enough area for the airship to _land_ if it need to – which it didn't. The Highwind, like all the ships of that line, was equipped with its own cargo elevator, which was already being lowered from the belly of the airship. Cloud watched it with some trepidation – despite his suggestions, Hilda had sent men down, about half a dozen WRO members in their light grey uniforms and red berets. And there was someone else.

Denzel was leaning on one of the steel cables holding the elevator, the lapels of his lab coat whipping in the artificial wind the Highwind kicked up.

"Cloud," Denzel greeted him grimly as the platform came low enough for him to step over the edge and onto the ice. He looked Cloud up and down and snorted. "Have you been swimming? In a _swamp_? I thought you didn't like swamps."

"I don't like _you_ either, most of the time," Cloud answered, arching an eyebrow at him. "You can chew me out for the screwed up healing later, right?" he asked. "Time's a bit of an issue here."

"On account of the patients, I'll hold off for now – but you have it coming."

"Yeah, yeah," Cloud said and then nodded towards the WRO members. "I think I told Hilda to keep the men onboard."

"Hilda takes orders only from Hilda," Denzel snorted and glanced at the men. "Besides, Reeve sent them."

"Reeve can kiss my ass," Cloud grunted. "Is he on board? Because I know a lovely spot of swamp he really needs to make intimate friends with."

Denzel snorted again. "Which explains why he isn't on board, I guess," he said.

Cloud tsked at that and then turned to properly face the WRO members. "Gentlemen," he said. "Your orders?"

"Sir," the commander in the lead said, saluting Cloud sharply. "We've been ordered to aid you in any way possible in the transfer of the aliens on board the Highwind, after which we will be staying behind to investigate the spacecraft as per the president's orders."

Cloud smiled. "Like hell you are," he said.

The WRO commander blinked, almost managing to smother the surprise. "Sir?"

"That spaceship is about to blow up and it'll take you with it when it does," Cloud said flatly. "We're already being bathed by more radioactive shit than I care to really try and Sense, so I think you lot better stay here."

Not waiting for an answer, Cloud motioned at the clones. Most of them were still only making their way towards them - they had a lot of stuff to shift around and there were seven clones who couldn't walk properly and were being transported on stretchers. "Give them a hand," he ordered. "And know that they're under _my_ charge. Not your boss'."

The WRO members exchanged looks before the commander made an executive decision and saluted sharply. "Yes, sir!" he said, followed quickly by the other WRO members.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you didn't like Reeve," Denzel commented idly.

"I hate his guts," Cloud answered, watching the WRO members closely as they went. He might've not yet made up his mind on the matter of the clones and there was a lot he didn't know, but he'd be damned before he let some panicky little WRO volunteer go trigger happy at them, not on his watch.  "This is going to be a bit weird," he warned Denzel. "These guys aren't…"

"Human?" Denzel asked wryly. "We kind of figured they wouldn't be, what with the spaceship and all."

"Actually – they are," Cloud said and moved to follow the WRO members. "Just… not home grown. You'll see."

Denzel cast him a look and then shook his head and turned to meet the clones. Cloud glanced away from the WRO members and at him, smothering a grin at his concentration. Even after all these years, Denzel in Doctor mode was somewhat hilarious to him – Denzel might've been in his thirties now, but somewhere underneath the dignity there was that little brat Cloud had once known.

"Well I'll be damned," Denzel muttered and then he headed to meet the first two stretchers that were being brought in.

Cloud followed, making a soothing gesture at Ren when the lieutenant went to move in between his men and the WRO members. "At ease, trooper," Cloud said. "They're friendly."

"Yes, sir," Ren said, though he watched Denzel very closely when he went to check on one of the wounded – Zeke, who was still coughing up bloody bits of his own lungs. Denzel, fully in his element now, ignored the attention he was receiving, as he pushed his white sleeve up to reveal one of Cloud's old bangles. The Sense materia glowed faintly yellow, as he activated it and cast the spell on the wounded clone.

"I need you to turn on your side," Denzel said to the coughing clone. "I'm going to do something that will help you recover faster, but first it'll make you cough trice as hard and you might choke if you lay on your back. Once it is over, you will be able to breathe easier, I promise."

The clone glanced at Ren who nodded stiffly. With Ren's and Denzel's help, Zeke turned to lay on his side in the classic recovery position. Once Denzel had the man where he wanted him, he ran a hand over the Restore materia on his bangle and then pressed his right palm on Zeke's front, and his left on his back, putting the clone's torso between his faintly glowing hands.

A moment later the clone convulsed and began to hack out lumps of clotted blood and flesh and other nasty things that were involved with regenerating the tissue of one's lungs.

"…Holy _fuck_ ," one of the clones muttered, half in horror and half in awe as the clone quickly began to recover, his breath rasping and gurgling for a moment but easing fast as Denzel, a far more skilled healer than Cloud was, fixed the man's lungs.

"Right, good," Denzel said, pulling his hands back and letting the exhausted clone collapse to lie on his back again. He checked the man with Sense again, and then moved back. "This man goes up first - he'll need a respirator for a day or so to make sure his lungs don't collapse, and the sooner we get him hooked to oxygen, the better."

"We have life support in our armour," Ren said quickly. "It includes a limited oxygen supply. Would that suffice?"

"Talk me through how it works, and I'll tell you if it does," Denzel ordered.

Cloud left them to it and instead headed back along the ice path he'd created to help the last clones with the heavier stuff – namely the crates. He took the task of pushing the crates from those clones that had been struggling with them, and began shoving them towards the elevator just as Denzel was lifted up, along with the more severely wounded clones.

"Sir, these are your people?" one of the clones who was hauling several backpacks with him asked.

"Sometimes," Cloud said, grunting as he pushed the crates along. "These guys are friendly and you can more or less count on them not to do anything too stupid – but if you see someone in a black suit, those guys are not so friendly."

The clone glanced at him, and despite the fact that the man was wearing a helmet, Cloud could _feel_ him emoting at him. "You're wearing black, sir," the clone said after a moment.

Cloud snorted at him. "Very observant of you. What's your name?"

"I'm CT-4685. They call me Swoop, sir," the clone said.

"Well, Swoop, what I'm wearing is not a suit. What I'm wearing is a very fine fashion choice for a trek across a swamp, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise," Cloud said, grimacing. Leather and swamp water did not go very well together. The first chance he got, he was going to burn his trousers. And probably his boots too. "A suit is a whole different thing. It's all neat lines and well pressed seams and shit. You'll know it when you see it."

"If you say so sir," the clone said dubiously.

"I do say so." Cloud said and then concentrated on the task at hand. There'd be enough time to worry about the Turks later – when they inevitably shoved their collective nose into this mess. Hell, Cloud was surprised one of them hadn't snuck on board the Highwind – but then, everything had happened too fast for even the Turks to spy what was going on.

There'd be more than enough time for that later, though. Cloud was very much not looking forward to it.

The cargo elevator soon lowered again, to retrieve the next batch of the wounded. The WRO members, all of them a little wide eyed and twitchy now that they'd gotten good look at a couple of the clones' faces,  were doing a good enough job, shuffling the wounded up to the airship, organising the equipment and various crates in stacks to be easily moved up as well.

"Doctor Strife headed up with the first batch of the wounded, to organise the medbay," the WRO commander said quickly to Cloud, when he spotted him. "We should be able to get everyone else on board in two more trips, sir. We'll send the gear up next."

"Carry on, then," Cloud said, and though the man made an aborted move to ask him something, he ignored it. No doubt the WRO members wanted to ask a _lot_ of questions about the clones and whatnot. Sucked to be them – Cloud didn't feel like answering.

Not to mention it wasn't as if he even knew anything more than anyone else did. There hadn't exactly been time to interrogate anyone – and even if there had been, Cloud didn't particularly feel like doing that either.

"How much time do you think we have?" Cloud asked Ren, who was watching over the proceedings closely.

"Hard to say, sir, but I'll feel better once we've put some distance between ourselves and the _Venera_ ," the Lieutenant said. He was holding a clunky looking device with a glowing screen, and though he had his helmet on, Cloud could tell by the line of his shoulders that he wasn't happy about what he saw on the thing. "The radiation is climbing fast. I think the ice in the power room has melted."

"Well… fuck," Cloud said eloquently.

"Yes, sir, very much so," Ren agreed grimly. "I should've left a sensor behind, to monitor the temperature. If I knew how fast it was climbing I could tell how much time we have."

"Nothing we can do about that now," Cloud sighed, shifting his shoulders and testing the weight of his sword on his back. If he had to he could throw up a Barrier to shield them from the radiation and maybe even from the explosion if it came to that… but there was no way to protect the Highwind – it was all too big for that.

Nothing to do but hope that it didn't come to that.

"How big will the explosion be? What sort of fall-out can we expect?"

"It's a small reactor, sir," Ren said. "Five hundred charges equivalent, I'd say, maybe five fifty. Blast radius a hundred meters at most, shock wave… that's hard to say – the swamp might dampen it. No more than a kilometre at any rate. As for the fallout, it'll be only local at most – a rate of decay less than two standard years. Though I can't say how it will affect the swamp or how the swamp conditions might interfere."

Cloud nodded slowly. It had been a long time since anyone had to worry about shit like radiation. There'd been some experiments and ShinRa had used some dirty bombs in the Wutai War, but even they hadn't managed to justify their use later on, when the general public had gotten a glimpse of the resulting destruction. And these days, well, if anyone even suggested anything that might be harmful to the environment in that way, they were publicly lynched.

Still, so long as Ren's standard year wasn't that much longer than the local year, then it wasn't too bad. Some places in Wutai were _still_ radioactive.

"Sir," Ren said, watching as the elevator lowered. "This… ship," he said, motioning at the Highwind. "It is not space worthy, is it?"

"No, it isn't," Cloud admitted and after a moment of consideration added. "We don't have spaceships. The Highwind is an airship – an older one, there are newer ones these days that are bigger and faster and have greater carrying capacity, and so on. But they're all about the same, capability wise. Can't go higher than about a kilometre or so."

Ren was quiet for a moment and then turned to look at Cloud. "I've been looking and this planet… this star system hasn't been marked as inhabited on our maps," he said, lifting the device he was holding a bit. "There's barely any mention of this system on our logs at all. This is not a Republic planet, is it?"

"No," Cloud said, folding his arms.

"Separatist?" Ren asked.

"No idea what that even means," Cloud shrugged and gave the clone a look. "Looks like you guys got stranded pretty much in the middle of nowhere."

The clone said nothing for a moment, turning his attention from Cloud to the device and then up to the airship hovering above them. "It's not nowhere, sir," he then said. "You're here."


	6. Chapter 6

Cloud was with the last batch of clones and WRO members being lifted up to the Highwind – and he was beyond ecstatic to leave the damn swamp behind. Especially since the spaceship _Venera_ had just let out a gust of smoke and was letting out faintly worrying groans.

Ignoring the mess of the cargo hold – which was full of clones and crates and overzealous WRO members along with a number of Highwind's own crew – Cloud walked to the nearest intercom and buzzed the bridge. "Get us the hell out of here, Hilda."

"Already on it," she answered.

Cloud glanced at the clones and then at the airship's crew members who were hanging around, watchful and carefully nonchalant about it. "Where did Denzel set up his medbay?" Cloud asked the nearest one.

"He took over the crew compartment – said he needed the showers," the nearest crew-woman said.

"Right," Cloud nodded and then hit the intercom again. "Go south by south east. We need to pick up my bike."

"There's an explosion happening. Screw your bike," Hilda answered and then she hit the general communications because the next thing she said echoed through the whole ship. "Everybody brace yourself!" she ordered, just as the floor under them tilted as the ship swung around as fast as Highwind's propellers let her.

Cloud ditched the intercom and dashed to the near window, Ren quick at his side. Below them, something had happened to the _Venera_ – there was a thick pillar of smoke coming from its side and it was tilting again, the ice around it either having melted or broken in some minor explosion. The flames coming from inside were visible now, flickering in and out through the open holes, just barely visible under the thick smoke.

Then, the Highwind sped up as fast as its engines would allow, and the _Venera_ was quickly left behind.

"Seems like we made it," Cloud said, pushing away from the round little window.

"Yes, sir," Ren said, his voice subdued, looking at the window for a while longer, taking in the swamplands below them, and the mountains in the distance. Then he turned to Cloud. "I'd like to see my men, sir."

"Right this way," Cloud nodded.

Ren took a moment to organise those clones that were staying behind in the cargo hold – the only place on the ship that could easily hold them, the WRO members watching them and the Highwind's crewmembers who had obviously also been put on guard. Once the clones had set up camp, guarding their gear from their curious watchers, Cloud led Ren away from the cargo hold, and towards the crew quarters.

Denzel had Zeke and a couple other clones hooked up on respirators and was just checking another clone for internal injuries when Cloud and Ren entered the semi crowded crew compartment. It was a long, cramped space that ran along the ship's hull, with bunks running along the walls in two levels – there was barely enough space to move in between them. That was airships for you.

"How does it look, Denzel?" Cloud asked, while Ren glanced from one clone to another to make sure they weren't worse off.

"They'll survive," Denzel said, pushing another Cure into the clone he was treating, probably fixing some internal problem Cloud hadn't even noticed. "I won't start fixing the bones you messed up here, though – I'll deal with them once we make it to Edge and can get these men to the clinic."

"Messed up bones?" Ren asked, wary.

"Cloud in his infinite wisdom decided to heal some broken arms and legs and judging by the looks of it several ribs without bothering to set any of them first," Denzel said, glancing up. He motioned at one of the clones – the man's leg armour had been removed and his leg had a definite _angle_ to it, which wasn't entirely natural. "I have to break them and set the properly."

"You mean to say that the thing you did, sir, that… green stuff, it can regenerate _bones_ instantly?" Ren asked, a little dubious.

"It doesn't even hurt, sir," the clone with the wonky leg said, sounding bewildered.

Cloud sighed. "I thought it would be better to make sure no one died of any internal bleeding or whatever," he said. "Next time I'll just let everyone die, alright?"

"One of these days, I'm going to confiscate that sword of yours, and I'll hide it somewhere where you'll never find it again. Like the bottom of the ocean. Would save me a lot of trouble," Denzel muttered and straightened. "So are we all going to explode and die horribly or did we get out alright?"

"Seems like we'll survive for now," Cloud said, shaking his head. "I'm going to go talk to Hilda, see that she won't leave my bike behind. You wanna stay here, Ren, or do you wanna see more of the ship?"

"Go on, sir," Zeke said, his voice a little muffled under the breathing mask. "We'll be alright."

Ren hesitated and then nodded. "I'll accompany you, sir," he said, turning to Cloud.

Cloud nodded and, after a glance at Denzel – who just waved a dismissive hand at him – they left the make shift medbay. Ren fell in step with him, following closely behind but Cloud could tell he was keeping a close eye on their surroundings, probably memorising everything.

"Is this a military ship, sir?" the clone asked after a moment.

"Used to be. The Highwind's part of the HS Shipping company and usually she ships cargo between continents. The WRO – the guys with red hats – occasionally hire HS ships for troop transport and whatnot though," Cloud said. "Hard to say if the WRO hired the Highwind to get us, or if Hilda – captain of the ship – decided to come on her own, though. Guess we'll have to ask her."

Ren nodded slowly. "And the WRO is…?"

"World Regenesis Organisation – a semi military volunteer group that tries to make the world a better place," Cloud said, somewhat sarcastically. "The leader is a… _friend_ of mine. The WRO along with a couple of space observatories spotted your ship while it was in the orbit, and I was near to the crash site so the president of the WRO asked me to have a look."

"And that's why you were there so quickly, you were actually looking for us," Ren said thoughtfully, nodding.

They arrived on the bridge then. It was in an unusual state of alertness, but there wasn't any panic or noise or anything like that in the air – Hilda kept even tighter control of her crew than her father did, though generally with less cursing.

"Are we going to make it, Captain?" Cloud asked, walking up to her.

"It hasn't blown up yet," Hilda answered, turning one of the many monitors at her station towards Cloud, to show the view of the rear camera – the _Venera_ was still smoking and burning, but it looked like it was in one piece. "What sort of blast radius are we expecting?"

"Hundred meters – shockwave of a kilometre," Cloud answered.

"Great – we're almost at the shockwave threshold then," she said, scratching at her short blond hair and turning back to her instruments. "Are we sticking around to watch the show, or do you want me to pick up your precious bike first?"

Cloud hesitated. Fenrir was outside the shockwave radius and it was a hardy thing, could probably manage even if it was closer. He felt a little torn leaving it like that, but…

"We'll stick around," he said and glanced at Ren, who was standing in semi-attention and probably recording everything he saw. If their suits had life support, they probably had recording devices too. "Probably should make sure no one's on the deck, though."

Hilda gave him an unimpressed look and then turned to the pilot. "Take us two points east," she ordered, checking her instruments. "AGL seven hundred meters and hold elevation there."

"Yes, ma'am," the pilot nodded, and the Highwind began climbing up in elevation, lifting higher and higher. Cloud walked up to the front view window as Hilda ordered the ship where she wanted it, about a kilometre and a half from the crash site. There she ordered the ship to a stall, and turned it around. As Cloud and Ren watched the distant plumes of smoke, rising from the _Venera_ , Hilda and the crew of the Highwind aimed the recording devices to the crash site, and brought out magnified live footage.

Seen from above and at a distance, the spaceship didn't look quite as impressive as it had, up close.

"How much of it will survive the explosion?" Cloud asked Ren, who stood at his side tense and attentive.

"Not much, sir," the clone answered grimly and, after a moment, removed his helmet. He had a stiff look about his face, and his eyes were intense as he stared at the footage. Cloud watched him for a moment before looking up and at the feed.

He didn't even bother to try and imagine what the man must feel, waiting for his only way off the planet he'd crashed on to just _blow up_.

Hilda came to stand at his other side, folding her arms and drumming the side of her arm with her gloved fingers. "Was there any way to save it?" she asked, glancing over Cloud's head at Ren.

"No, ma'am," Ren said. "Even if we'd managed to get the core cooling functional, the power shaft came loose when we crashed and the fuel cells were damaged. Catastrophic power failure was unavoidable. Even at best we could've only stalled it for a few hours."

"Pity," Hilda muttered. "I would've loved to have a look at that thing."

Cloud hummed in agreement – he wouldn't have minded a proper tour himself. "Lieutenant, this is Hilda Highwind," he said then, motioning at the woman in her early twenties. "Her father owns the HS shipping company. Hilda, this is Lieutenant Ren – he's the leader of the troopers you're carrying."

"Pleasure," Hilda said, nodding at Ren who nodded back. "So do you all really look alike?"

"We're clones, ma'am," Ren said. "There's very little variation between us."

"Really," Hilda said, eying him for a moment longer. " _Clones_. Boy am I glad I don't have to deal with this mess," she then said, shaking her head and turning her eyes up front again.

Cloud took a deep breath and sighed before deciding that he wasn't going to think about the _mess_ that this was probably going to devolve into until later, once it happened. For now, he concentrated on the video feed, watching the _Venera_ burn.

It took a while – almost ten minutes of tense, uncomfortable waiting. When it finally happened, it was without any warning – one moment the ship was smoking like it had been for a while, and then it just _blew_. There was an intense flash of light that whited out the video feed completely for a moment. Down below in the distance the ball of light that suddenly consumed the _Venera_ was brighter than the sun and Cloud just barely kept himself from closing his eyes and looking away.

The shockwave that followed knocked over the crooked trees that grew in the swamp and sent splinters flying, and though they were at a safe distance, the Highwind rattled with the force of the explosion.

Once the light passed, there was only smoke and wreckage strewn about where the ship had been, bits and pieces already vanishing into the swamp. The broken, crooked skeleton of the _Venera_ remained there, in the heart of the fires and the smoke, barely visible and utterly beyond repair. Compared to the behemoth of a space ship, it was a solemn sight.

There was silence on the bridge of the Highwind, as they watched the wreckage burn and smoke. Eventually Ren looked away and so did Cloud, turning to Hilda. "Take us away," he said quietly. "There's nothing more to see here."

"Yeah," she said, turning to head back to her station. "Let's go pick up your damn bike."


	7. Chapter 7

After Fenrir had been picked up – and Cloud had inspected it closely with Sense to make sure it wasn't radioactive or anything – Hilda set the course for Edge.

"It's about an hour's journey," Cloud said to Ren and the other clones who had stationed themselves around the equipment crates. "Which will give us time to chat, if you're up for it."

"Yes, sir," Ren said, motioning for a couple of other clones to join him. "There are questions we have which I would like answers to."

"So I figured," Cloud nodded and stood up.

"You sure you don't want to have a shower and change of clothes first, Cloud?" Denzel, who'd moved from the crew compartment back to the cargo hold to check on the rest of the clones and make sure no one would die on the way to Edge. "You stink, in case you hadn't noticed."

"I have noticed," Cloud said with great dignity. "And I will keep noticing it all the way to Edge and until the moment I see Reeve – and then I will proceed to strip everything I currently wear and shove it all in his face. It will make up for the fact that I wasn't given the opportunity to drown his ass in the swamp."

Denzel gave him an amused look. "If you say so," he said. "By that time you'll probably be dry, though."

"Still stinky, though," Cloud said, and glanced at one of the nearby crewmembers. "Is the meeting room free?"

"Should be. Let me check, though," the woman said, moving to a nearby screen imbedded in the wall. She hit a few buttons to bring up the airship blue prints and checked what had been assigned where. "It's free, sir," he said. "For another hour or so until the forward watch will be released from duty – they've booked it for recreation."

"Long enough for us then," Cloud said. "Book it for us, will you."

"Already done, sir."

Cloud shook his head at that and then motioned Ren and the other clones to follow. There were three others that Ren was bringing – the only clones aside from Ren who had any colour on their armour. Ren had slashes of blue on his helmet, shoulders and arms, and the other three had green. Some sort of rank insignia, Cloud supposed.

They made it to the meeting room, where Cloud promptly shut down all the recording devices and then checked the walls with Sense to make sure no one had inserted any new ones. "Alright, we should be private now," he said after he was done yanking all the wires out so that the cameras and microphones couldn't be activated remotely.

"Sir?" Ren asked, looking at one of the cameras.

Cloud shrugged. "I don't like my chats being recorded," he said simply. In all honesty he didn't really give a crap who recorded what – but he was pretty sure whatever the clones said here wasn't anyone's business, and if he let recordings exists, they'd eventually end up in Reeve's hands – and the Turks', which was far worse. Never mind the Shinras'.

Cloud sat down at the side of the long meeting table that dominated the room, motioning Ren and the others to do the same. "Can I have some names?" he asked, looking at the other clones curiously.

"Sergeant CT-5156. My brothers call me Strike," the first introduced himself, saluting and sitting down.

"Sergeant CT-3431, I'm called Gunny," the next said, doing the same.

"Sergeant CT-6982, Yazoo," the last said.

"Yazoo?" Cloud asked, a little taken aback by that.

"Yes, sir," the clone said, nodding sharply. "I was in charge of the fourth squad of the third platoon."

 Cloud blinked and then dragged his mind back from the memories. "Right," he said slowly. "Strike, Gunny, Yazoo. I'm Cloud Strife. Those CT things, are they your serial numbers, or your names?"

"Both, sir," Ren said. "The number designates which batch of clones we come from. Among other things. Officially, Clone Trooper 4539 is my name, but we're permitted nicknames for differentiation."

"Permitted. Right," Cloud said, looking between the others. Now that they had the actual time to talk he had no idea what to ask. Just the fact that these guys existed answered a lot of questions – but it also created a whole slew of other questions, so many that he didn't know where to begin. And he rather doubted asking them to _tell him about themselves_ wasn't the right way to go.

Folding his arms, Cloud leaned back. "Let's start with your questions, and move on from there," he said and nodded to Ren. "What do you want to know?"

Ren looked a little taken aback by that, and he shared a look with Gunny before slowly removing his helmet and setting it on the table in front of him. "This planet – does it have a name?"

 "Some people call it Gaia – most people just call it the Planet," Cloud said.

"Who rules it?"

"No one. There used to be a semi tyrannical corporate rule that governed the entire planet, about twenty five local years ago, but after it collapsed no one really felt like having a centralised government. Towns and villages rule themselves – the only place with an actual government is Wutai, a string of large islands past the western continent, they're ruled by a monarchy," Cloud said.

Ren nodded slowly. "So this Edge we're going to, it's like that – basically a city state? Does it have a governor?"

"Technically no," Cloud said. "It's split between the Bank of Midgar which controls the economy in the Eastern Continent – where we are right now – and the WRO, which has its headquarters in Edge. And some individuals that have sway with the general population. There is no one person who rules Edge, though, and no one that can tell people what to do."

The clones took a moment to digest that, Ren with a troubled look on his face. "So there is no one in charge of this planet?"

"Not as such, no," Cloud agreed.

"So, no centralised government," Strike said, frowning. "Which probably means no governmental or national utilities, no social care."

"Surprisingly enough we manage without them," Cloud shrugged. "Denzel runs the clinic, which is the largest hospital in Edge – it's half a non-profit organisation that functions mainly by donations, and it takes care of a lot of the social care locally. Everything else is corporate – water utilities, power, and so on."

"How about law and regulation?" Ren asked. "If you have no basic government, then…"

"Rule of common sense and common ability," Cloud shrugged. "The people of Edge and places like it have a system of unspoken rules, and people follow them or they pay for it. You do dumb shit and people are likely to pay you back in kind. You rob someone, you can damn well expect them to hunt you down – or pay someone else to hunt you down. You kill someone, and people hang you for it."

"Wouldn't that make it very easy for some thug to take control of the entire settlement?" Strike asked, sounding dubious.

"Yes, and it happens in some towns. Not in Edge, though, on account to certain individuals living there – the strongest people are neutral in Edge, which balances the system. Also, the WRO's presence regulates things a bit too," Cloud shrugged. "I won't say it's a perfect system, but it beats the corrupt and tyrannical corporate rule we had before."

"Right," Ren said, frowning and still looking troubled. "And where do you stand in all of this, sir? I assume Edge is your home."

"It is. I'm one of those neutral people," Cloud said with a wry smile.

"You seem aligned with the WRO, though," Strike said, narrowing his eyes.

"The president is a friend and the WRO is itself mostly neutral – they're concerned with the betterment of… pretty much everything," Cloud shrugged. "I'm not part of the WRO but I occasionally do favours for them."

"Hmm," Ren said nodding, and ran a hand over his chin, thinking. "And this world, this… Planet. It has no space travel."

"No. We had a space program, back when the aforementioned corporation still ruled the Planet, but that failed. After that, no one has had the means to try again," Cloud shrugged. "The collapse of ShinRa – the corporation – was followed by a lot of bad shit, the least of which was the collapse of the economy. We had famine, disease – the population dropped by half inside a year, just because people starved to death. That's the price we paid for letting a single entity rule every aspect of the world. Power, economy, general utilities, medicine, transportation… everything collapsed."

"Ah, I see," Ren said.

"So there's no way out of here," Strike said darkly.

"Not by our means," Cloud agreed.

The clones were silent for a moment, Ren and Strike exchanging some dark, telling looks. Yazoo was leaning back and thinking hard judging by the looks of it – but Gunny was staring at Cloud intently.

"Considering that this planet is somewhat stalled both in technological and sociological development," the Sergeant said slowly. "You don't seem all together surprised about any of this – us, I mean. Clones don't surprise you."

"Not the first time I've run into clones," Cloud shrugged. "And compared to _those_ clones, you lot are much more pleasant."

"You people have cloning technology?" Gunny asked, sounding a little taken aback.

"Well, I wouldn't call it that – from what I've seen of you guys, your tech is very different from what we had. And we don't have any of it anymore – it went with the collapse of ShinRa and thank fuck for that," Cloud said, scratching at his neck. There was a patch of mud there, drying, and it was starting to itch. "Ours was based off of retroviral treatments among other things – the whole basis of it was turning already existing people into copies of other people. It was a spectacular failure, all around."

Gunny blinked at that. "Ah," he said, though he still looked a bit surprised.

"You seem to be very familiar with the corporation, this… ShinRa," Strike said slowly. "And the things it was capable of."

"Used to be part of it – and was part in taking it down, too. It's a long and irrelevant story," Cloud said, shaking his head. "But I did brush in with a lot of ShinRa's less fun aspects, it's corruption and it's human experiments, the cloning stuff included, which I guess gives me some insight into all of this," he added, motioning at the clones.

Ren nodded slowly, watching Cloud. "So, considering all that and your influence – do we fall under your charge, or the WRO's?" he asked. "Who here is going to be in charge of _dealing_ with us?"

Cloud arched an eyebrow, but he wasn't really surprised. No doubt the WRO people had said something, and there was the crew of the Highwind, too. While the whole thing was a bit unique, it involved a lot of stuff that people would want to get their hands on – the clones themselves, yes, but their gear above all. It didn't take an expert to see that the tech the clones had was way above anything they had on the Planet.

Reeve might be running a mostly volunteer, mostly non-profit organisation, but he'd been running it long enough to have developed some bad habits. Those bad habits included resurrecting and repurposing ShinRa's tech, a lot of the time. He and the WRO might try to dress it up pretty, but there was no doubt in Cloud's mind that Reeve would pay an arm and a leg to get his hands on the tech the clones had.

And there were others too who'd do far worse things. Hell, Cid would probably kill a man for any info about the spaceship.

"That depends on what sort of people you are," Cloud said finally and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "And what you want."

"What we want, sir?"

Cloud shrugged. "I can't help you off this planet. I don't think anyone can, not in anything less than maybe ten, twenty years. But other people can help you with other things. Like power, wealth, prestige and so on – if you're willing to barter knowledge and equipment, it can win you a lot of favours with people, buy you a nice cosy place around here. If that's what you want, I can't help you."

"I can say with some certainty that no one among us wants to settle down," Ren said, somewhat dryly.

"Alright," Cloud agreed. "Do you have means to leave?"

"Not to leave, no," Strike said, and looked at Yazoo.

"We can put together a transmitter," the so far mostly quiet clone said. "We have enough components for that. We're a bit far out, but that shouldn't stop us from getting a signal out."

Cloud's eyebrows lifted at that. "So you could call for someone to pick you up?"

"We'd have to build the transmitter first, and even then it might take a while – we're only clones and there's only so many of us. We're not exactly a priority," Yazoo said. "Our general isn't… known for coming back for clones."

The other clones grimaced a bit at that before Ren shook his head. "Still, it's our duty to try and rejoin the war if we can, so that is what we're hoping to do. And we'd prefer to do it without involving ourselves in local politics," he added, looking at Cloud. "Or the local economy. We're soldiers, sir – not business men and certainly not ambassadors."

Cloud looked at him for a moment and then nodded. "Alright," he said. "I can use what clout I have and keep you under my wing which will ensure some security for you, and protect you from the many agendas people will soon start developing about you guys. Probably will help you not get stolen from – which people will try to do, all that gear you brought will be mighty tempting to a lot of people," he said thoughtfully.

"So, what's the plan, sir?" Ren asked, the line of his shoulders easing.

"Denzel will want to see you all at the clinic for proper check-ups and treatment and probably some vaccinations and whatnot, so that's a priority," Cloud said thoughtfully. "Reeve will probably get up in my face the moment he can but I'll deal with him. How long will it take for you to make the transmitter?"

"Anything from a day to a week, depending on if the components are all functional," Yazoo said.

"So we need proper housing," Cloud said thoughtfully. "Right. I'm going to go talk to Hilda, I think," he said and stood up. "Hopefully she won't have any previous engagements and I can hire the Highwind to serve as temporary base – it'll be the most secure option in Edge, until I can get you someplace safer."

"Will that put you under any strain, financially?" Ren asked, also standing up.

Cloud shook his head. "Not particularly," he said, and glanced at Ren. "In the meantime… I want to hear more about your Republic, and the war you're in. Can you come up with a briefing for me?"

"Yes, sir," Ren said. "Though there are some things I cannot share on account of them being confidential."

"Sir, if you don't mind me asking… are you military?" Gunny asked, looking at Cloud curiously.

"Used to be," Cloud shrugged and turned to leave. "It was a long time ago, though."


	8. Chapter 8

Midgar was never going to be repaired and it was never going to be fully cleared out. There was just too much worthless junk lying about, and after some years the city had turned into a sort of dark memorial and after some point the warnings of "keep out of the city, it's dangerous," had turned the old city into a sort of taboo. A dark holy place of the past.

Meanwhile, Edge, which had started out just a small huddled centre of houses, had spread around the city, eventually becoming the literal Edge of Midgar, enclosing the old city entirely inside it. In the years since, the construction industry had recovered and there were actually a couple buildings there that could be tentatively called _skyscrapers_ , standing like sentinels over the rest of the twin-cities. One of those buildings was the WRO headquarters, another was the Bank of Midgar. Their shining, proud existence made the ruins of old Midgar even more marked.

Cloud would never really get used to it. Somewhere in the back of his head, Midgar was still like it used to be, a gleaming construction built of corruption. There were flowers now growing in the ruins, and it would never stop being just a bit weird.

"What happened here, sir?" Ren asked, curious, as the Highwind approached the cities and more of the ruins came into view.

"Some terrorist attacks, sort of a war, monster attacks…  fake natural disaster," Cloud shrugged. "The old city was almost hit by an artificial meteor. It was pretty busted up before, but that was the final nail in the coffin."

"I… see," Ren said slowly.

Cloud snorted. "The old city was built by ShinRa. Its destruction is what brought the company down, more or less," he said and turned to look at Hilda. "Make way for the clinic, alright?"

"Sir, the president already sent orders for us to –" a nearby WRO member started.

"Your president can jump from a window. The clinic, Hilda, if you please."

"Sorry," Hilda said to the WRO trooper, as she nodded to the pilot. "He's offering me and my crew a small mountain of Gil. What he says goes."

"But – but we contracted you –"

"No, Reeve asked me and I acquiesced. There's a difference between doing favours and being paid nice hard cold cash," Hilda said cheerfully, as the Highwind spun to make way for the clinic, instead of the WRO HQ.

"Gil?" Ren asked.

"Local currency," Cloud shrugged and jerked slightly as his phone begun to ring. Sighing, he fished it out and answered. "Well hello, Reeve," he said.

"I see you're changing directions," Reeve commented almost nonchalantly.

"I suppose we are, yes," Cloud agreed, just as nonchalantly.

"And where do you think you're going?"

"I don't know, where do you think we're going?"

"Not where you're supposed to, at any rate. You really should be coming to the HQ."

"Oh, we should?"

"You really should."

Cloud waited for a beat and then said. "Well, we're not going to."

"Of course you're not," Reeve agreed with a sigh. "What are you doing, Cloud?"

"I don't know – what am I doing?"

" _Cloud_."

Cloud grinned at that. He _loved_ it when Reeve got that tone of voice. "I hired the Highwind. And you can just _suck it_."

Another sigh echoed through the phone line. "May I at least enquire as to where you're taking my men?" Reeve asked, sounding resigned.

"The clinic – you can pick up your goons there," Cloud said, and hung up. He glanced at Ren who was giving him a look, and then at Hilda who was sniggering at her station. "What?"

"Nothing, sir," the clone lieutenant said. "Nothing at all."

The clinic, while not a skyscraper by any means, was a fairly large construction. It had been expanded over the years many times, from the original single story clinic into a collage of interconnected buildings of varying sizes and shapes, the largest of them, the residential wing, was a six story building. They formed a sort of haphazard loop, and at their centre there was a garden.

Technically the facility was called the EdgeCentralHospital, but everyone called it just the clinic because it was _the_ clinic of Edge.

The Highwind lowered itself near the roof of the central building of the hospital, and as Hilda announced that they were level and steady, Cloud and Ren headed off the bridge. Denzel was already in the cargo hold, arranging the wounded to be transported down first.

"No one here is critical, anymore," Denzel assured Ren. "But its best we fix the failed Cure Cloud did as soon as possible."

"Of course," Ren said, looking at the wounded worriedly. "Exactly how will the procedure be done?"

"We'll give them local anaesthetic and muscle relaxant and then we use a brace to re-break the bone," Denzel said. "We'd do it by hand, but by now the bone will be too hard to be broken with anything less than mechanical means, I'm afraid. It's not a painless or comfortable procedure, but it will take only an hour at most, after which we can heal the bone properly and that'll take the pain away."

"So you don't actually use a hammer?" one of the clones – who had an arm twisted at a strange angle – said, sounding deeply relieved.

"Never listen to Cloud when it comes to medical procedures," Denzel said with a scowl directed at Cloud's direction. "Not unless your life depends on it, and even then you should exercise caution, suspicion, and all possible common sense. Because he doesn't have any."

"Hey," Cloud said, a little hurt.

Denzel pointed a warning finger at him and Cloud acquiesced, holding his hands up in surrender. A moment later, Denzel and the first batch of the wounded were being lowered down in the cargo elevator, and Ren was very carefully not grinning at Cloud.

"What?" Cloud asked crossly.

"Nothing, sir. It's just that medics seem to be pretty much the same, where ever you go," the lieutenant said calmly, his face turning perfectly impassive. He coughed. "I'll help prepare the next batch to go down," he then said, and quickly headed off.

The transport of people down took four trips, and Cloud and Ren joined the others in the last trip. The wounded had already been whisked away by then, and Cloud made his way to the nearest nurse to find out where everyone was, and that they were secure. The clinic might be Denzel's turf, but that didn't make it a fortress – and Cloud had no intention of losing any of the people under his protection to the intricacies of hospital transfers.

Ren was way ahead of him, though. He'd assigned one healthy and functional clone to every wounded one, so no one had gone alone anywhere and everyone had someone watching their backs. And comfortingly enough, every clone was taken to same wing, and so he kept everyone close together.

"I'm not an idiot, you know," Denzel snorted, when Cloud and Ren arrived in the ward where Denzel and another local doctor were checking one of the clones – the poor guy now had two mismatched legs and they were negotiating how they'd fix it. "I've closed up the ward for visitors, only the patients and the staff have access. And you, and I really should kick you out."

"You're not so old that I can't bend you over my knee, Denzel," Cloud said.

"Sure you can," Denzel answered dryly and then glanced at him. "Any chance you'd be willing to lend that sword of yours to my colleague?"

"She can get it from me once I'm part of the Lifestream."

"Thought so. Go with her and heal when and what she tells you to."

Cloud gave Denzel a sloppy salute and followed the other doctor. It had been a while since he'd volunteered in the clinic last, but not so long that he had forgotten how to go about it. Nor had he really forgotten how this part of it worked – he'd send enough people here himself just for these sorts of procedures, that the damn operation was all but tattooed in his head. It was gruesome business, all around.

The braces the doctors used were actually an evolved form of torture devices that ShinRa had once developed – they'd had a thing for systematic destruction, after all, and in Wutai, well… the braces had seen plenty of use. The WRO had repurposed them to medical practices after enough of their members had been healed wrong, and eventually they'd made their way to the clinic – which aside from the WRO was the only establishment that used these sorts of braces.

 As Cloud hung about and watched, the female doctor Scanned and checked and then used braces of varying sizes to re-break various bones – arms, legs, fingers, one collar bone, and so on. Sometimes there'd be a crack, most of the times there'd be a crunch, and never did it look in any way comfortable. While the clones made a very good showing of not being affected by the pain, the doctor reset the bones with the use of another – less torturous – brace and once she had the bones and their splinters where she wanted them, she turned to Cloud.

"Localised level two, here," she motioned. "Try and not go past the knee."

"Yes, ma'am," Cloud answered and took out his sword. It lacked all the finesse of using a bangle, to be wielding a fifty kilo blade around in a hospital, but it worked. Cloud touched the broken legs and arms and fingers and everything else as gently as he could with the sword handle, resting the pommel over the break and channelling the magic as precisely as he could.

In his case it usually meant that the entire appendage was infused with healing magic. He was some things but delicate was not one of those things. Precision at his power level was next to impossible – he was more of a blunt force object, really.

Ren followed him through the whole thing, watching curiously, obviously trying to figure out how it worked. It didn't take much to figure out that whatever tech and powers the people who'd made the clones had, they didn't have materia.

"It's some sort of healing device in the sword, sir?" Ren asked eventually.

"Sort of, but not really," Cloud said. "I'll explain later, once we're done here and have more time."

"Yes, sir," Ren said, and stepped back, satisfied.

It took them some four hours to finish not only repairing the damage Cloud had caused, but also do various other things for the clones, a lot of which went well over Cloud's head. The smoke inhalation damage was repaired, as were other injuries, and towards the end of the third hour, Denzel was doing check-ups on the healthier clones.

"I don't know if they're susceptible to Geostigma, but better be safe than sorry," Denzel said, as he was checking Ren over. Soon after, a nurse brought in a tray full of tiny phials – thirty one phials to be exact. "I want all of you to drink one of these."

"What is it?" Ren asked, frowning.

"It's Panacea," Denzel said, taking one of the phials and handing it to Ren. "It's perfectly safe."

Ren glanced at Cloud and Cloud nodded. "There's no actual chemicals in it," he said. "Its water infused with the power of the Lifestream. It's the most potent cure we have against pretty much every disease."

"You mean the Force," Ren said slowly, while the other clones around them perked up. "You can put the Force into water?"

"We can't," Denzel said, giving Cloud a questioning look at the word _Force_. "But those who have re-joined the Lifestream can."

Cloud shrugged. "Drink the thing," he said, motioning Ren to go on. "It's safe."

Ren looked at him for a moment before accepting the phial and opening it. He drank it like he was taking poison, tense and prepared for pain and bad tastes. Then his face cleared into surprise. "Huh," the clone lieutenant said, handing the phial back. "That didn't feel like anything."

Cloud grinned at that and patted the lieutenant's shoulder. "Just means you're healthy," he said. "If it _feels_ like something, then something's wrong."

The other clones followed their commander's example, drinking the phials they were offered with various levels of trepidation. Not all of them got off as easy as Ren had – a couple ended up coughing afterwards and one broke out into a cold sweat. In each case the doctors checked them over, and announced that the coughing ones had been developing colds and the one in cold sweat had a minor infection which was already clearing up.

"Well then, looks like we're about done," Denzel said, looking over the ward. Cloud did the same. All the bones had been repaired, every clone was standing up under their own power now, healthy as chocobos and if, Cloud wasn't entirely wrong, they were all probably starving by now, too. Healing did that.

"Are we free to go, doc?" Cloud asked.

"There's one more thing," Denzel said, glancing at Ren. "Which I would like to discuss with the lieutenant in private."

The _confidential doctor-patient stuff_ look on Denzel's face was very marked, so Cloud stepped back. "Alright," he said. "In the meantime, I'll see about getting everybody here something to eat."

"That'd be appreciated, sir," Zeke said, sounding relieved, and the other clones murmured in agreement, a lot of glum faces brightening considerably.

Ren glanced at Cloud and then at the other troopers before nodded. "Alright, Doctor," he said, turning to Denzel. "Lead the way."

While Denzel was talking with Ren, Cloud managed to arrange an early meal to be brought to the clones in the closed up ward. While the nurses brought in the food carts and the clones accepted the warm meals they were offered with eagerness, Cloud peeked his head out of the ward. Sure enough, there were people waiting for him in the hall just behind the locked glass doors. Familiar people.

There was Reeve, talking with one of the WRO members from the Highwind. There was a woman Cloud was damn certain was a reporter – how the hell she'd gotten in passed hospital security he didn't know. And then there was someone else.

" _Reno_ ," Cloud said darkly, stepping to the glass door.

"Yo, Cloud," the Turk grinned, stepping up. "I hear there's some interesting things going on. Any chance you might fill me in?"

"I'll fill you with some solid steel," Cloud offered. "How about through the stomach? That sound good for you?"

"Your sword isn't solid – it's a damn jigsaw puzzle," Reno answered, grinning wider. "Aliens, Cloud," he said, and made a weird two handed motion. " _Aliens_."

"They're _my_ aliens," Cloud said and tapped the glass between them with his index finger. "You keep your filthy Turk hands off them."

"Hm. Filthy sounds about right," Reno snorted, looking at his hand – and Cloud realised, belatedly, that he had mud under his fingernails. "You really shouldn't be so selfish – it clashes ever so bad with your philanthropist image. Besides, you _can't_ just hog them to yourself," Reno added, his grin clearing into a more serious expression. "Whatever you've offered them aside, you've got to at least give us the opportunity to make a counter offer."

"I've _got_ to?" Cloud asked flatly.

"It would only be fair," the Turk said. "Else you'll be _monopolising_ them. And we _all_ know how you feel about that sort of thing. Try and keep us from saying our bit, and you'll be restricting not just our access to them… but their access to everything else that's available to them."

Cloud arched an eye brow at that, then at the reporter who already had a phone up and was filming the whole exchange – and finally at Reeve, who was patiently waiting for his turn.

Then he turned around and walked away.


	9. Chapter 9

[Jax ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118868669656/clonefic-prompt-what-the-first-few-clones-cloud)barely had had any time to find his footing or to realise that they'd landed, survived, and might yet live, when the guy who'd just dragged him out of the _Venera_ practically threw another brother at him - an unconscious one.

And then the guy - who Jax was fairly sure was still cursing like an old spacer - was off again.

"What the-?" he asked and then caught himself, quickly laying the other clone down and checking his vitals - next to him Marcell was doing the same to another unconscious clone. "Alive," he announced.

"Same here," Marcell answered. "And looks like we've got more incoming."

"Yeah," Jax agreed and looked up. The _Venera_ was sinking and would never fly again - but they were alive. Alive.

"We made it," he whispered.

"We haven't made it yet," Marcell snapped. "Come on. Get ready to receive wounded."

"Yes, right, of course," Jax nodded and quickly got to work. Inside, though, he was laughing, giddy and deranged.

And alive.

 

-

 

[Ren ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118861795611/assuming-your-work-lets-up-later-ren-seems-to)was used to making split second decisions. He was good at it too - it was what had made him a lieutenant and often times it was all that kept him and his men alive on the field. Those sudden moments when a decision had to be made now and not a moment later and the ability to make the right choice.

That was why he was in the power room - because it was the right place to be. The only place, if he wanted anyone to get out of the _Venera_ alive.

When the blonde man with glowing eyes barged in and told everyone to get out, Ren took only one look at him. The stranger was hauling the nearly unconscious Babel out of the water, hoisting him up and to safety - saving him from drowning with a near careless show of physical strength paired with odd gentleness. And then he was already reaching for another clone.

It took less than a second for Ren to decide he trusted this man to save them.

 

-

 

[Felix's ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118872302526/prompt-for-refuge-from-chapter-2-clones-thoughts)vitals flat lined and there was nothing they could do. He was just another fallen brother among hundreds - among thousands.

For a moment.

Their strange rescuer shot out of the _Venera_ like the Sith were after him and he just dropped the two clones he was carrying. Next thing he'd taken his behemoth of a sword and then he just slammed the thing's hilt down on Felix's chest.

There wasn't enough time to even shout at the man in outrage -because in a flash, Felix's vitals pop back in on helmet HUDs and then he was back.

"What the hell was that?"

"Defibrillator?"

No one thought it was and before they could say anything, the stranger healed them - and the _Venera_ threw all of them off her back.

 

-

 

[It](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118858883716/ren-taking-over-command) didn't register immediately. Ren's mind was still playing back that moment in the power room - that flash of green and following frost as an entire room's worth of water froze in an instant. No visible devices, no chemicals. Just an instant reaction. How?

"Sir," a brother's voice called for his attention in that comforting timbre of private in-helmet communication. "Your orders?"

It was Strike, a sergeant he'd just barely gotten to know before the _Venera_ had gone down. Strike was standing half at attention, white armour so muddy that the green stripes were almost hidden. He was looking at Ren expectantly.

Damn. He hadn't had the time to check yet.

"The Captain?" Ren asked, half hoping that Captain Set was just out cold somewhere.

"Didn't make it, sir," Strike said.

And Ren had been the only lieutenant who'd made it to the _Venera_ when they'd evacuated.

Ren looked up, and for a moment stared in incomprehension. The blond man who'd rescued them from the wreck was now encasing the _Venera_ in ice, creating it even as he ran over it.

"Sir?" Strike asked.

"Do a head count," Ren said, his voice rough.

First duty of every new officer in charge - count the losses.

 

-

 

 _[Returning](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118865323676/sending-from-the-clones-perspective)to the Lifestream_ and _Becoming One with the Force_ sounded similar enough to spark some strange, hesitant hope. Though theirs was a regiment utterly disillusioned about the goodness and kindness of the Jedi, they'd still been raised - trained, engineered - to have a sort of innate respect for the concept of the Force. Even experience wasn't quite enough to smother it.

To become one with the Force, that was the best death you could have. A pure death - nothing like being left to lie cold and alone on a battlefield, nothing like being forgotten nameless and faceless, just a number on a ledger, crossed out.

To become one with the Force was a Jedi death.

They hoped, with bitterness and pain, but they hoped. Just this once… let our brothers have this, just once.

And in a flicker of green, sweet and strange, the dead were released.

 

-

 

[Strike ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118864417136/the-clones-watching-cloud-return-their-fallen-to)didn't really expect much. Maybe some words, potentially some weird gestures - at most some sort of small ceremonious ritual. All in all he didn't expect anything to really happen.

He'd seen the Force in action and neither it nor the people welding it impressed him much. The most remarkable thing he'd ever seen a Jedi do was to hold back a part of a landslide - and only a part; specifically just enough to save his own ass. A lot of good clones had died.

No, Strike didn't expect much from the Force or people who used it - it had never really helped any of his brothers, so many of whom had been just left to rot by a Jedi general who didn't give a hutt's ass about them.

He didn't expect the complete lack of ceremony. He didn't expect the strangely humble posture - their weird rescuer actually went on his knees on the ice. He didn't expect the… humility of it at all.

And he most definitely didn't expect his fallen brothers to just evaporate, armour and all, into thin air.

 

-

 

"[I swear](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118867338121/for-the-refuge-phonefic-the-clones-landed-down-in) I saw something over there. Something moving."

"It's a swamp. There's probably a lot of things moving out there."

"Not like this. The thing was huge."

"Well what did it look like?"

"Like a snake maybe. Just… enormous."

"You're probably just imagining things. You got knocked about pretty bad. It's your first crash, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but…"

"It's probably nothing. Just put it out of your mind."

"If you say so…"

 

-

 

[Gunny ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118866382721/gunnys-thoughts-and-conclusions-of-cloud)had visited Dathomir once and it was once too many. The witches had been barely accommodating to them and the two Jedi general's they'd been escorting, and they certainly hadn't bothered to be overly cautious about their… lifestyle.

And the mist… the mist was hard to forget. The way it just steeped in, hanging in the air - it had gone right through armour and it had been in every breath. It had been green. Always green.

When Cloud - and wasn't that a name - used his abilities, there was a bit of green mist there, hanging about and washing over the things he was… effecting. Granted it was a much lighter shade than the Dathomirian variety, but it was still there.

And his eyes glowed. They actually emitted light.

Cloud wasn't a Jedi, that was obvious, and thought Gunny had no experience with the Sith he doubted the man was one of those either. And yet he definitely didn't act like a Dathomirian witch.

So what the hell was he?

 

-

 

"[It's ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118869599036/clones-reaction-to-the-airship)pretty slow. Can't be a spaceship."

"Why would anyone send a spaceship when we're on the surface? No, it's some sort of low atmo shuttle probably."

"That slow though?"

"Doesn't need to go fast, does it? It's not going very far."

"That's really slow though."

"… Yeah, okay, that's not a shuttle."

"Are those… propellers?"

"I think they are. Can you spot the thrusters?"

"What thrusters?"

"Yeah I thought so. How does that thing stay in the air?"

 

-

 

[Mark](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118870787441/refuge-phone-prompt-clones-reaction-to) narrowed his eyes, the expression safely hidden under his helmet. He was staring at two soldiers in grey cloth uniforms and red head gear - or more specifically, he was staring at their weapons.

He'd though at first that their rescuer was a bit strange, lugging an enormous sword around - an actual metal sword, not a lightsaber. Now it was proving that it was a common local habit - everyone here carried blades of some sort. That wasn't what puzzled Mark, though. It was the rifles.

They made no sense whatsoever. Where was the power cell? How were they cooled? How could you fire them without them blowing up in your face?

"How do those things work?" Mark finally asked, motioning at the rifles - if they even were rifles.

"You point it and pull the trigger and death comes out the pointy end," the WRO trooper said, grinning.

"Cute," Mark muttered and made mental note to ask their rescuer if he got the chance. The man was bit of a weirdo, but at least he wasn't an asshole.

 

-

 

"[What ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118932500751/clones-watching-cloud-reunite-with-fenrir)do you think that is?" Jax asked under his breath as their strange rescuer went over the odd wheeled vehicle, all but crooning at the thing.

"Some sort of land crawler I think," Marcell said, looking on with interest.

"Crawler?" the blond man asked in outrage, his head coming up from behind the odd vehicle. "Crawler - no, gentlemen, this is a motorbike."

"Right, sir," Marcell answered slowly.

"But… what is it for?" Jax asked.

"Going fast, being a lunatic and endangering your life on a regular basis," the doctor snorted. "You should wear a helmet Cloud."

"Never."

 

-

 

[There ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118933285461/refuge-phone-prompt-the-clones-trying-to-figure)is no question about it - their rescuer was very accustomed to taking command. He did it naturally and without effort. His interactions with the airship's crew and the soldiers with red hats just proved it. They all looked up to him with varying levels of respect and he didn't bat an eye at it.

"Commander at least," Leo said. "If not a general."

"Maybe - but why would a general be doing rescue all by himself?" Grim asked dubiously. Their own general certainly wouldn't have.

Leo shrugged and they continued to watch their rescuer effortlessly - and somewhat irritably - order everyone around.

Except maybe the doctor - but that's medics for you.

 

-

 

[Natural ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118863409256/rens-first-impression-of-cloud)born humans had a lot of faces and usually a different personality to go with each one. It depended on who they were interacting with and what their relationship with that person was. Clones learned early on to expect it from natural-borns. Even Jedi were multi faceted - some more than others.

So Ren had withheld his judgement concerning… Cloud's character, until he could observe him interacting with people other than clones. Even if the man was Force sensitive and some strange local equivalent of a Jedi…

But even then he wasn't entirely sure what to make of the man. Because he didn't really change his behaviour at all - the only change in him was the slightest improvement in his mood, and that was probably because they got out of the swamp.

Turning on private communications, Ren turned to look at Gunny - who was staring at their rescuer hard. "What do you think? Would you say he's a Jedi?"

"Tempted to call him a witch, sir," Gunny answered. "Ask me again later."

A… witch.

That wasn't worrying at all, was it?

 

-

 

"[A ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118933529731/clones-kind-of-wondering-about-clouds-sword-and)sword."

"What about a sword?"

"Why is he using a sword?"

"Why not? You saw what he can do with that thing. I'd say he's damn well justified in using it - the thing can cut clean through reinforced hull!"

"Yeah, but people here have ranged weapons… of some kind, anyway."

"Most of them have blades too. That guy there - pretty sure he has at least half a dozen knives alone."

"Yeah but he also has a rifle. Strife doesn't. Just the sword."

"The guy can use the Force. And flash freeze things. And heal people. Why would he use a rifle?"

"… Fair point."

 

-

 

"[What ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118935780886/clone-fic-prompt-speculation-on-what-a-suit-is)do you think a suit is?" Swoop asked idly on private comm. He was sitting on an ammo crate, on semi casual counter watch duty - watching the locals who were watching them.

"What, like a suit of clothes?" Mark asked.

"Maybe. It's something Strife said, back at the swamp. That people in suits weren't friendly. The way he said it made it sound special."

"Maybe it's some local special armour," Mark said thoughtfully. "What did he say about it?"

"That it's black, lined, and I'd know when I saw it," Swoop shrugged.

"Some sort of spec. ops gear maybe?"

"Yeah, maybe…"

 

-

 

[It ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118873740601/for-the-refuge-phonefic-do-any-of-the-clones-pick)was hard not to notice - all of them did it. They looked at one clone, then another, then they take another astonished look at the first - and then their expressions tighten. Some of them even looked a bit hostile.

"Not fond of clones, this lot," Marcell commented on the private channel.

"I thought we were the first clones they'd ever seen," Jax muttered.

"First Clone Troopers maybe. Not first clones though. And judging by the looks of it, the first encounters didn't go so well."

"What should we do?"

"Not much we can do. It's their prejudice, not ours."

"Funny thing how it tends to be the prejudices of other people that gets you killed," sergeant Strike muttered. "Keep in company and watch each other's backs, all of you. Let's have no mysterious accidents."

"Yes, sir."

 

-

 

[Five](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118934544861/clones-reacting-to-the-healing-and-or-their)-Four eyed his crooked leg and then looked at the doctor. "How come it doesn't hurt at all?" he asked, still confused. It was bent to at least a three degree angle and by all reason it should have hurt. A lot.

"Because technically there's nothing wrong with it," the doctor answered. "The bone is intact, the muscles are functional, sinews, nerves, everything is where it should be. Aside from the bend, it's a perfectly healthy leg."

"Doesn't look very healthy," Five-Four said.

"That's what a powerful Cure does," the Doctor snorted. "Fixes you right up - and sometimes all wrong. Cloud is a very powerful man - but he's not a very precise healer."

The Doctor turned to attend to Felix. "No need to worry though. I can fix you up properly."

Yeah - with a hammer, Five-Four thought and shuddered. Still if he would be fixed this good afterwards… He'd take the hammer.

 

-

 

"[They're](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118934925656/clones-discussing-being-paranoid-about-how-hammers)… not actually going to use hammers, are they?" Babel asked, looking a little pale at the thought.

"Probably. I mean, they use swords - actual metal swords," Dash muttered, looking at his legs. Both were broken when the _Venera_ had crashed and now both were crooked. He wouldn't be doing much dashing with these legs.

"Hammers, geez," Babel said and shuddered. "Might as well bash them with rocks."

"Might as well," Five-Four agreed from another bunk. "But if they actually set the bones properly and do that healing thing afterwards, I can't say I mind."

Dash gave him a dark look. "Hammers though."

"Yeah, but instant recovery after that. I'll take that over bacta tank any day."

Dash considered that and sighed. "If they can set bones right," he muttered. Else he'd have to change his name into Crawl.

 

-

 

"[I've ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118935377001/assuming-hoping-that-you-dont-mind-people)taken full inventory of what we managed to salvage, sir. We should be able to make a decent stand, if it comes to it."

"Rations? Ammo?" Strike asked.

"Enough rations for a couple of weeks, plus what's in everyone's personal kits. A full crate of spare ammo," Mark reported. "Plus a crate of grenades. We also have plenty of miscellaneous gear, medical supplies, specialised weaponry, monofilament refill cartridges… we didn't manage to salvage any jet pack fuel though - it went in the crash."

Strike went over the inventory and nodded. The jet pack fuel was a loss, but one they could survive. Even if Strife failed them, they'd manage well enough under even more dangerous conditions. "Check everyone's kits and restock everyone - triple rations if they can fit it."

"Yes sir," Mark saluted and went to work. Strike looked over his brothers and nodded with satisfaction.

They'd manage.

 

-

 

[Babel's ](http://esamastation.tumblr.com/post/118936241031/for-your-refuge-phone-fics-what-were-the-clones)relief about the fact that they weren't actually going to use hammers after all lasted about a minute. Then he saw the brace.

"Er," he said. "That looks a bit like… a vice."

The doctor nodded, affixing the thing on his arm, the screw and lever part of it over the bend in the arm. "It basically is. It'll put the pressure where we need it, so that we break only what we want to break."

Babel stared, a little alarmed, as the doctor started turning the lever. The pressure was immediately noticeable.

This was going to hurt. A lot.

"Ready?" The doctor asked.

Not really, Babel thought a little desperately and nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of an interlude chapter, written completely on my phone, to prompts people send me on tumblr :3


	10. Chapter 10

After making sure no unseemly people were about to storm the ward and that all the clones were accounted for and happily munching their dinner – aside from Ren who was still talking with Denzel - Cloud went to the nearest window that opened into the inner courtyard of the hospital complex. The view from it was rather spectacular, by Edge's standards.

Despite years of trying, they hadn't quite managed to make greenery return to the city. Sure there were the lilies, but they weren't quite natural and only grew wherever they damn well pleased. And people found them a bit creepy anyway. Aside from them, there was no other wild or even cultivated greenery anywhere near Midgar – not before one passed the fifty kilometre radius of _death and decay_ that still surrounded the ruins.

Nowhere, that was, except here.

After making sure there was no one down below, he swung out of the window and dropped down three levels and to the ground. Breathing in the sweet scent of living things he quickly navigated his way through the over grown paths and into the heart of the rather enthusiastic garden.

There, behind a rope fence utterly covered with paper charms and prayers and surrounded by a ring of lilies, was the fountain.

"Hello, Aerith," Cloud said, jumping over the rope fence and kneeling amongst the lilies. The water was perfectly still, reflecting the lilies and walls of the buildings surrounding it. "You'd be happy to know I made some new friends today."

Usually being here was a sure fire way to relax for him – it was hard to bring troubles here and then bring them out again, the place just leeched them off him. Not this time though. He was keenly aware of the echo of the Highwind's engines and the sounds of people coming from the hospital – keenly aware of the clones and the damn Turks and everyone else.

"This is going to be a mess, an interesting horrible mess," he commented to the water.

If he could, he would pack the clones up in the Highwind again and just hightail out of here. Take them somewhere nice and desolate where he didn't have to deal with Turks or Reeve or… people in general. Of course he couldn't, though, because… fuck it, Reno had a point.

Never mind the fact that the whole bit about there being _clones_ from _outer space_ on the planet was catching up with him. The whole bit about the republic and whatnot. Fuck goddamnit. Try as he might he couldn't pretend this was something he could just… deal with. No this whole thing would probably have consequences for the whole goddamn Planet and wasn't that just lovely.

A world changing event. And he was smack in middle of it.

"Troubled?" a smooth voice commented behind him and Cloud sighed.

"Fuck off, Reeve," he said.

"I don't think I shall, thank you all the same," the man said, chuckling, and came closer, cane tapping quietly against the half hidden rocks that had once, before everything had grown out, made a footpath down to the fountain. "How are your new friends?"

"They're lovely, thanks," Cloud said, not looking at him. "And not meeting you until I have time to educate them on some things concerning your agendas and all the shit that you're involved with."

"Ah. Probably for the best," Reeve said, and they were quiet for a moment, watching the pond. "So," the other man finally said. "What do you think?"

"About what?" Cloud grunted.

"Of my little scheme?" Reeve said, and eased his way over the rope fence, joining him at the fountain's edge.

Cloud frowned and looked up. Reeve was impeccable as always in his three piece suit, leaning onto his cane and looking at him calmly. "The fuck," Cloud said, eloquent.

"There were two possible explanations as to why the object we observed moved in such unnatural ways," Reeve said calmly. "The implication that the object was artificial – or that it at least moved artificially – was obvious right from the start, but we couldn't be sure _why_ before someone actually laid eyes on it. Neither the WRO, Cosmo Canyon, nor Rocket Town have good enough tech for that. Someone had to go and look. I could've done it myself, I could've sent anybody."

Cloud opened his mouth and closed it.

Reeve arched his eyebrows at him. "Did you think it was a coincidence I asked you specifically to check the landing site – when the Highwind was in Edge?" he asked. "She would've taken only slightly longer than you to get to the crash site, you know – and an airship is infinitely better equipped to deal with such things. Even before we knew what actually crashed, she would've been the better choice to check it out if not for any other reason than because of the aerial view. But I asked you to do it. As a _favour_."

"Oh you conniving son of a bitch," Cloud said, and swung to his feet.

Reeve grinned, a little smug under his well trimmed grey beard. "Granted, I was more concerned that we might have an entity of Jenova's type on our hands – in which case you were the only person who could do anything about it," he said, and shrugged. "A spaceship is a bit of a relief."

"I hate you so much," Cloud muttered.

"No you don't," the smug asshole said and shrugged his shoulders.

"So you _intentionally_ put me in charge of this mess?"

"Pretty much. Whatever it was, you were always the best option for… taking charge of the situation," Reeve shrugged. "If it was something dangerous then you were always going to be our frontline defence, and if it was something… far more complicated, then you're one of the few neutral parties on this planet equipped to handling it – and the ensuing politics."

Cloud stared at him for a moment and there was one deranged moment where he imagined with visceral detail how it would feel to strangle the man. It would be absolutely _delightful_.

Instead, he started unbuckling the harness of his sword, catching the sword harness and all before it fell and setting it down on the footpath. Then, wordlessly, he stripped his vest, and threw it at Reeve's face.

The asshole didn't even stumble.

"Lovely," Reeve said, catching the swamp soaked cloth and eying it with amusement. "You know, there really should be a limit to how many midlife crises you can have."

"I will murder you in your sleep," Cloud answered, making a violent strangling motion at him.

"You're far too blunt for that – no, you'll run me through long before," Reeve said with great amusement and held the vest by the zipper puller. "Do you want this back?"

"I want you to _choke on it_."

The man just smiled amiably at that. "I'll just keep it then," he said and, after considering the vest for a moment, set it to hang on the rope fence. "Tell me about your new friends. My men have told me some things and I've received the pictures they've taken. Clones, hm?"

"They're not like Sephiroth's," Cloud said, folding his arms over his now very bare chest. "These guys were made from the ground up – not from other people. And they were made with intent – not as some asshole's sick little experiment. As far as I can tell they're part of a custom order army. Big one too."

"Hm," Reeve said. "Well, isn't that troubling?"

Cloud shrugged. It was nothing anyone else couldn't have figured out, insider knowledge or no. It was obvious enough – all you had to do was to look at the clones and it was all there. Everything from how they acted to what they wore to their gear – everything standardized, everything near identical. A perfect designer army made from perfect soldiers.

Not SOLDIERs though.

"They're human, though," Cloud added. "Damn well trained and even better equipped – but they're not enhanced."

"Still, a custom order army is a bit of a terrifying prospect, isn't it?" Reeve said. "And human too. Humans, in outer space…"

Cloud hummed in agreement. "Any ideas about that one? Because I'm drawing a blank. Because they're not just humans, but we and them, we speak the same language. There's _zero_ variation there, except maybe dialect. Even idioms and sayings are the same as far as I can tell."

Reeve nodded thoughtfully, considering it. "Well there has always been that weird question mark in our history," he said. "One that ShinRa never bothered to research, but which the Cosmo Canyon has been trying to solve, on and off, for decades."

"Which is?"

"Human history on this Planet," Reeve shrugged. "Or more precisely the _lack_ of it."

"The… lack of it?" Cloud asked, blinking with confusion.

"Hm. There's ancient Cetra sites all over the planet – ruins and caves with ancient bits of art and occasionally tech and whatnot. Humans though… our handprint on this world is fairly superficial. Even in Wutai the records go back hardly at all," the president of the WRO said. "Nanaki's people have more history than humans do, and they've almost gone extinct numerous times in their history."

Cloud frowned a bit and then considered it for a moment. "Huh," he then said.

"There's also the utter lack of technological… timeline, should I say," Reeve added. "There are bits and pieces of technology we've had for as long as anyone can remember – and no one knows where they came from. Holograms for one."

"No one uses holograms anymore," Cloud said.

"Of course not – they're too expensive to produce. But we have the know-how to make them. Yet ask anyone to develop hologram technology now, and no one would have any idea how to go about it – because we don't know how it was developed in the first place," Reeve said and ran a hand over his grey beard. "It's just one of those things we've always had. And also, it's one of those things which we're rather forgetting."

Cloud frowned at him and then turned to look at the pond. Its surface was mirror still, as always. "So… We're all aliens?" he asked, wry.

"Aren't we, though?" Reeve asked. "You've seen the statues they discovered in the City of Ancients. The Cetra looked _nothing_ like us. Except for our dear Aerith and who knows how many human ancestors she had."

Cloud nodded slowly. "Well," he said. "Isn't that something? But as interesting as that is, it doesn't change much _now_."

"Maybe not – but it's something to keep in mind," Reeve said, and looked at him seriously. "What are the goals of your new friends?"

"More or less they just want to go back to where they came from. There's apparently a war going on," Cloud said, scratching at a patch of dried _something_ on his bare stomach. "Which presents its own set of problems. I'll get back to you on that once I know more about it –and before I do, you're not seeing them."

"Mm-hmm," Reeve agreed. "But you will let me see them?"

Cloud scowled. He didn't want to, he really, really didn't want to, but… fuck it, yes, he would. "I'll let you know," he said, and glanced up as a voice called his name.

Denzel was in the window he'd jumped out of earlier, leaning his elbows onto the windowsill. "If you two old guys are done with your clandestine little date… the lieutenant asked for you, Cloud," the damn brat called, actually cupping his hands around his mouth to make sure his shout carried.

Cloud sighed. "Wish I could still ground his ass," he muttered and picked up his sword and its holster, strapping it on. He glanced at Reeve. "Please get your overly smug ass and your little goons out of my face, thank you."

"Alright," Reeve said, smiling. "Call me."

"Go drown in a bucket of piss, Reeve."

Cloud jumped up to the windowsill, making Denzel back up hurriedly. "You are not funny, by the way," Cloud said, pointing a finger at him. "At all."

"I'm the very soul of humour," Denzel answered and looked him up and down. "You could've gotten rid of the pants too. They're filthy."

"I would've, but the indignity of actually trying to get them off would've ruined the dramatic effect," Cloud said with a shrug and a sigh. "Besides, I figured I shouldn't actually go around naked in a hospital."

"Good call. I would've had to ban you," Denzel said and made pretence of considering it. "Actually maybe you should've."

"Piss off, brat."

Behind him, Ren was looking between the shirtless Cloud and Denzel and obviously trying to decide how or if to react to the whole thing. He seemed to decided not to, because he straightened instead. "Sir," he said. "May I have a private word?"

"You can have a whole bunch of them," Cloud said. "Denzel?"

"Use my office," the brat said, waving a hand and heading back to the other clones. "I need to do another check up on the lieutenant's men anyway. Take your time."

Cloud arched an eyebrow after him. Another check up? After basically bathing each and every one of them in Sense already? Interesting. "Well then," he said to Ren. "Let's go talk."

Ren blinked, glanced at Cloud's bare chest and then apparently decided to just roll with it. "After you, sir."


	11. Chapter 11

Cloud hopped to sit on Denzel's desk while Ren closed the door. "So, what's up?" he asked. "Something Denzel found?"

"Yes, sir," Ren said with a nod, looking at the helmet he'd been carrying under his arm. He hesitated for a moment before looking at Cloud. "Sir, I understand that our presence on this planet is somewhat troubling for you, especially if we're the first off-world visitors you've had in a while and that there will most likely be some issues, locally, concerning the discoveries and realisations our existence alone brings forth."

"Yes, well," Cloud shrugged. "We'll handle it, don't worry about that. I can deal with all of it."

"I'm sure you can," Ren said with a nod. "However I appreciate the trouble it will still cause and in light of it… I'm hesitant to ask, but must. I understand you… do favours for people."

Cloud blinked at that and then leaned back a little, looking at the man closely. "I do," he said slowly. "Lots of people do, it's a sort of economy on its own." And it had been since ShinRa collapsed and almost taken with it the whole system based around Gil. They had their money based economy back now, but people still relied on the older system of trade – item for item, favour for favour. And someone in Cloud's position couldn't really be hired for _money_.

"So you want a favour," Cloud said. "What sort of favour?"

"A financial one," Ren said. "The doctor found… something which demands more study. And it might eventually require surgery which, I understand, is much more expensive than what has been done for us so far."

Cloud's eyebrows shot up at that. So Denzel _had_ found something. Interesting. He folded his arms and considered it. Surgery was costly, he knew that much – healing bones and whatnot was easy, if you had the Materia and re-usable equipment to do it, but surgery required drugs and whatnot and drugs were expensive. And he doubted it would be a small little operation either, not with that much trepidation on the lieutenant's face.

"You're going to have the surgery, yourself?" Cloud clarified. "And you want it – it's not just Denzel threatening you with doom and gloom?"

Ren frowned. "Is he not trustworthy, sir?"

"He's the most trustworthy doctor you'll find on this planet," Cloud shrugged. "If he says there's something, then there's something. But you shouldn't agree to weird medical treatments just because a doctor says you should."

The thing he'd noticed about the clones was that the more commanding you were, the more agreeable they were in return. He had some very bad ideas about why that was, and it was just one of the many reasons he was wary about Reeve and the Turks and everyone else meeting them. And the thing was, Denzel was a doctor – head surgeon of the clinic, even – and when he barked orders, people obeyed.

The clone lieutenant considered that and then shook his head. "In this I'm willing to have the benefit of the doubt – and as it is, it might not come to surgery. The doctor wants to take tests first. I suppose I can revaluate my options if it comes down to it later."

"Alright," Cloud said. "And those tests, I'm guessing you want them done soon?"

"As soon as possible," Ren said, holding his chin up. "And there is a very good chance that my men need to be similarly tested."

"So you _all_ have this thing, whatever it is?" Cloud asked, his eyebrows lifting a little.

"Most likely, yes. The doctor found it on several clones, and the indication is that we all have it."

Well… fuck. That didn't sound like anything dangerous at all, did it. Cloud bounced the ideas of intestinal self-destructs and biomechanical bombs for a moment before shuddering and quickly pushing it out of his head. Denzel wanted to do tests – that could be anything from blood tests to x-rays and whatnot. While not as expensive as surgery, it still didn't come cheap, especially if every clone had to be tested. And if it came down to surgery…

Not even at the clinic could you get thirty one surgeries done with anything less than a couple millions, at least.

"Alright," Cloud said slowly. "Before I agree to do this… favour, have you considered that you have other options than me?"

"The WRO, you mean," Ren said slowly.

"And other similar parties," Cloud agreed. "They're demanding a chance to see you and to _make their own offers_. And as much as I hate all of them, I can't in good conscience say no, not on your account. They have means I don't, and they can offer you opportunities I can't. Including private doctors with specialised practices, probably more suited to dealing with this, whatever it is."

"All in exchange for our technology and intel," the clone lieutenant said.

"Well, yes," Cloud said, nodding. "If you're smart about it, you could build up quite the nest egg and then you could do whatever you wanted with it – including surgery. I personally wouldn't want you to do it, because it would probably give huge tech advantage to whoever you sided with and thus throw what little stability we've managed to gain out of the window… and we'd probably end up with one side monopolising all others, again. But I can't decide for you."

Ren frowned and was quiet for a moment, thinking about it.

Cloud watched him and then prodded again. "Also, if I did this as a _favour_ I would have to demand a counter favour," he added. "Before you left. Can't be going around doing favours for free – that's not how it works and it would devalue the worth of my work, whatever it is."

"And what would the favour you demanded be?" Ren asked.

"Intel, primarily," Cloud said. "And depending on what that intel reveals to me, probably other things too, things I can't yet name. The amount of money required to do this favour for you isn't not inconsiderable, by local standards. Especially if it comes down to surgery. Drugs are expensive as hell."

"I understand that, sir," Ren said, frowning. "In this I can't speak for my men, not yet, not before we've had the chance to discuss it. And on a personal level… if I, as exchange for this favour, offered you the intel you required, would that devalue the _counter favours_ of my brothers?"

"Probably, yeah," Cloud agreed and smiled wryly. "If you do it, do it in bulk."

"Right," Ren muttered, eying him. "But you would be willing to assist us in this – you'd pay for it, for a favour?"

Cloud considered that and then nodded. "Yes," he decided. With these sort of trades it was always hard to say if it was worth it – but he did have the money and the value of the information was too high for him to say no, and then risk the clones taking Reeve's or the Turks' offers. Or worse yet, the Bank's.

"That's all I wanted to know," Ren said. "I need to discuss this with my men, in private, before I know if we will do this."

Cloud nodded. "Alright," he said. "Just out of curiosity – do you want to see the representatives of your other potential sponsors? And do you think you'll make your choice before or after?" he asked.

Ren considered it. "After," he said. "If that's possible."

"It's very possible – they're basically banging at the doors for a chance," Cloud shrugged. "Do you want to meet everyone one by one, or all at once? Do you want a private or a public meeting?"

Ren frowned. "What would the impact of a public meeting be?"

"Everyone would have to be on their best behaviour for one, which is always nice to see. There'd be reporters and people taking pictures and probably a whole lot of questions thrown at your way," Cloud shrugged. He didn't particularly care for press conferences himself – but they kept everybody on their toes and limited the level of corruption openly displayed, which was probably for the best. "Private one on one meetings would let everyone speak a bit more freely – meaning there'd be bribes, suggestions, seduction attempts and probably threats."

"That sounds time consuming," Ren muttered.

Cloud shrugged. "It would be. But you can learn a lot about a guy from what he uses to try and bribe and threaten you with. If you want to save time, though, a public meeting with everybody is the way to go."

"That sounds like the best option, then," Ren said. "I trust you can arrange it, sir?"

"I can," Cloud sighed, and considered his options. Then he grinned. "And I know just the place to do it too," he added and hopped off the desk. "First I need to brief you on all the attending parties, though," he said, and scowled. "Better you don't walk into that meeting blind."

"Yes, sir," Ren said, the line of his shoulders relaxing.

"So," Cloud said. "If everybody's ready to go and Denzel's willing to release your men, we'll head back up to the Highwind. You can talk with your men about your thing, I can brief you on Reeve and the others, and so on and so on, and once we're done and everyone's ready to go, we'll call for the meeting. That sound good for you?"

"Sounds fine, sir," Ren said. "Will the meeting take place on the Highwind?"

"No. Until we set up base somewhere else, the Highwind is our home turf – let's not invite our enemies in. You never know what they'll do," Cloud snorted. "We'll have the meeting somewhere else. Neutral ground, as it were."

"Right," Ren said thoughtfully. "Should we consider the Highwind a permanent base, sir?" he then asked.

"Hmm," Cloud hummed, walking towards the door. "I have the Highwind on retainer for the next week, so in either case we have the full use of the airship. There are other places though, where we can go if it comes to it, all of them a bit more accommodating for a large crowd," he said. "Bit more secure too. Consider it a semi temporary arrangement for now, subject to change."

"Yes, sir," Ren said, and followed him out of the office.


	12. Chapter 12

Ren watched as his men made their way up to the airship. The whirr of the Highwind's engines and propellers was still a little odd – so very different from proper thrusters and rockets of all those various spacecrafts he'd come to known across the many battlefields. There was an odd rawness to the sound of the turbines. Everything about this place was raw, somehow. The place, the land – the people – were all… raw.

Yet for all that rawness, there was a quality to this place – and the people – that he couldn't quite place, and which was oddly comforting. It was in how people behaved, what they did – what they wore. The weapons they carried. The fact that they called their world by its crude designation, not by its _name_. The Planet, rather than Gaia. It was even in their medicine – which seemed so very unrefined and yet…

Men who'd broken their bones and dislocated joints, whose ligaments had been torn and whose joints and been wrenched in the crash were now walking, as good as new – and a lot of those broken bones had been broken _twice_ and healed twice and there wasn't a sign of the damage, anywhere to be seen. Even the best of medical cruisers couldn't offer that, and definitely not this fast. And it had been done by means he was starting to believe were half magical. Hell, the doctor did his medical scanning by _mind_ rather than machinery. By _Sense_.

Raw. It suited this place pretty well.

"Everyone's been transported up, sir," Gunny said, coming to his side. "Just waiting for you and Strife."

Ren nodded, looking down from the airship. "How do the men look to you?"

"Damn healthy, sir," Gunny said and shook his head. "Never seen anyone recover from what we were hit with this fast. Except in one place."

Ren nodded slowly. He'd never been to Dathomir himself, and if he had his way things would stay that way. But he'd heard the stories – Gunny having been the one to tell those stories most of the time. About the magic of the Nightsisters and their green water and smoke which could do what seemed like magic. The Water of Life.

He thought about the Panacea – water infused with the Force, with the _Lifestream_. "Do you think these people are like Dathomirians?" he asked, hitting the private channel on his helmet comm.

"Like them? No, but… There are some similarities," Gunny said. "Lots of them. The things they do… the things they can do. Maybe there's devices they're using we're not seeing, but even so… it's uncanny. But they're not like the Nightsisters as far as culture goes, that's for damn sure."

Ren nodded slowly, glancing backwards as he heard the familiar sound of heavy, rubber soled boots. Strife – still shirtless and still covered in dried mud and bits of swamp, stomped over without any attempt of either being quiet about it, or being polite about his presence. Though short and slight in build, the man was somehow… large, when he moved. Maybe it was the sword, maybe it was something else – the presence of command, probably. He just seemed to take up a lot of space, for a man so short.

"We ready to head up?" Strife asked, scratching at his flat stomach. "Because I really could use a wash and I hate hospital showers. Too much damn disinfectant."

No, Strife certainly didn't seem like anything Ren had heard of Dathomirian witches.

"Waiting on you, sir," Ren answered.

"Well I'm here now, so let's get the hell out of here," the blond man said, and headed for the elevator.

Ren shared a look with Gunny and they followed the man. Soon after, the elevator was being lifted up, and the hospital was left below them.

"Out of curiosity, sir – the treatment we got," Gunny said, looking down over the edge of the elevator platform. "I don't suppose it was for free?"

"Since I was the one who brought you guys in, Denzel will put it on my tab," Strife shrugged. "And I'll pay for it the next time he starts bitching about funds."

"You… have a tab at a hospital?"

"Yeah. Denzel puts a lot of things on it that I haven't actually had anything to do with – pretty sure he balances out the deficit on me," Strife shrugged, careless.

The elevator finished its lift, clacking against the bottom of the Highwind where it was locked into place by automatic mechanisms and quickly and efficiently checked by the crew. While Strife stepped to what Ren now knew to be the ship's internal com system, Ren did a quick headcount on his men.

"Take us for a scenic tour, will you?" Strife said to the hand held microphone-speaker system. "Run circles around the city or something, just keep us on the move, okay? … Not yet, we have a meeting later on, probably. I'll let you know when I know. Also, I'm booking the meeting room indefinitely…  Does it _seem_ like I give a shit? No, really?"

"He's a charming one, isn't he?" someone muttered, not quite under their breaths.

Ren snorted. Whatever Cloud Strife was, charming wasn't included.

"I can think of worse alternatives than someone who doesn't give a droid's ass about speaking his mind," Strike said and looked at Ren. "What's the plan now, sir?"

Ren held up a hand in the sign for _hold_ and looked up as Strife walked towards them. "The meeting room's all yours," the blond man said. "I doubt they've gotten the cameras and shit online yet, but I can check it and rip all the wires out again if you want?"

"I'm sure we can handle it if it comes down to it, sir," Ren said, recalling the fairly primitive monitoring systems present in the meeting room. "Is there a time table we should follow?"

"Nah. You're set the pace for now," Strife said, examining his nails and grimacing at the dirt under them. "I'm heading off to wash this shit off and rob some poor sod for some clean clothing – you can probably find me on the bridge afterwards. Anything you gentlemen need before I go?"

"Are we to settle in here?" Yazoo asked motioning to the cargo hold. "Or are there quarters on board for us?"

"Unfortunately this is going to be it," Strife said. "I'll chase the crewmembers out of here and then you can do what you can to make yourself comfortable – I think there are hammocks and shit somewhere in here, I'll ask around to get some for you. But this isn't really a crew transport ship. It's barely a cargo ship."

"Right," Yazoo said.

Strife shrugged. "Idea isn't to stay here permanently, though – just as long as we're staying around here, the Highwind is the most secure option. If and once we're done here, I'll take you guys somewhere more comfortable. Until then though…" he trailed off. "Anything else?"

"I'm sure we can manage, thank you, sir," Ren said with a careless shrug, Strife walked off without another word. Ren looked after him for moment and then turned to his men. "Gunny, Yazoo, Strike – have you had the time to establish squads?"

"Yes, sir," Yazoo said. "I'm taking Tank, Dux, Marcell, Mark, Jax, Trap, Jammer, and Log. I'm one man short of a full squad, but together we'll make a decent technical team."

"I'll take Kas, O'han, Babel, Dash, Zip, Samson, Five-Four, Jane, and Swoop," Strike said.

"And I'll take the rest; Zeke, Sevens, Bee, Grim, Bumber, Leo, Tove, Eke, and Felix," Gunny finished.

Ren nodded. He hadn't yet had the time to get to know everyone, but that wasn't his job anyway – it was enough that the sergeants knew their squads. "Each of you choose two men from your squads, and we'll have a meeting. I'd like to have everyone there, but there isn't enough space in the meeting room for all of us. And I don't know how secure this place is."

"And helmet coms' not enough?" Strike asked, glancing at the other Sergeants.

"We don't yet have a full scope of local tech, and the… powers these people have throw what little we know all up in the wind," Yazoo said. "We have no way of knowing what sort of things they can really do – so we don't know if our coms are really secure."

"Wonderful."

"So, choose your men and let's go," Ren said and glanced at their crates. "And check the gear, make sure it's all there."

"Yes, sir!"

As the men got to work, Ren stepped back to watch. He hadn't yet had the proper time to really inspect the troopers - but they looked well enough. They were a very ragtag bunch of leftovers, no mistake about that – he wasn't even sure if anyone there was from the same squads. But like all Clones, they knew their work, and they knew their duties, and they found their places amidst each other, fitting together near seamlessly, regardless if they knew each other or not.

That was what they'd been created for. Perfect military discipline and ability.

Ren had very few delusions about his life. He was a clone, after all – what he was, what he was supposed to do and how he ultimately ended up, it had all been laid out for him before he even fully understood what it all meant and long before he had any basis for comparison. The life of a clone trooper from start to finish was a short, brutal and pointed – all for one purpose.

A purpose, which his brothers displayed even here, on this weird raw world, so far out of things they really knew.

What a fucking mess.

As soon as his sergeants had their men picked out, Ren led them out of the cargo hold and towards the meeting room where they'd had their first proper chat with Strife. It had been just some hours ago, but it felt like it had been days at least.

As soon as he got there, Ren checked the cameras and other devices he'd seen Strife nearly dismantle last time and sure enough, they hadn't been hooked in yet. He double checked just to be sure, before removing his helmet and then tugging off his gloves and running a hand over his face.

"So, what's the situation, sir?" Gunny asked, watching him closely.

"Let's all sit down," Ren said, motioning at the long table. "I want your honest opinion about these people so far – especially the doctor."

"Doctor Denzel?" one of the troopers selected by Strike asked with surprise. Ren glanced at him sharply and the man stood at attention. "CT-2338, O'han, sir. My arm was broken during the crash-landing, sir – the doctor was the one to re-break it and heal it, sir. He was very professional and efficient about it – done and over with inside fifteen minutes."

"As far as we can tell, everything was fixed up as good as new," Strike agreed. "Don't ask me how in the hell they actually do it, but they do it well. Couple of the men even did a bit of stress testing – bouts of arm wrestling, a few exercises. Nobody reported any problems."

"So would you say that their medicine is trustworthy?" Ren asked, frowning.

"If nothing else they know how to fix a broken bone," Yazoo shrugged. "I wouldn't mind having our own imaging equipment have a look at what they did, mind you – but nobody thought to raid the _Venera_ 's medbay properly."

"It was flooded," Ren shook his head. "Couldn't get to it. Best we could do was to grab everything from the emergency locker."

"Pity," Yazoo muttered. "Not that we have any medics to actually use the stuff even if we had managed to get any."

"Nothing we can do about it now," Gunny said, watching Ren closely. "What's this about, sir?"

Ren hesitated and then leaned back. "Anyone of you ever had a brain scan?" he asked, somewhat wryly. He knew the answer.

There were a few exchanged puzzled glances and a couple of shrugs. "No, sir," Strike finally said. "Why?"

"The people here have an ability to scan things with their… I don't even know what, senses, I suppose. The doctor even called it the Sense – that was how they went over us all at the hospital, when they were fixing everybody up, and why no one was x-rayed. They don't use scanning or imagining equipment here unless there's something seriously wrong – just the Sense," Ren said. "It's apparently good enough to detect everything bigger than a cell, so it covers most everything. Broken bones, torn ligaments, severed sinews, tumours… foreign objects."

"Handy," Strike said, somewhat dubiously.

"It actually is, if that's all they need," Yazoo said. "So, a Force ability?"

"Probably," Gunny said, frowning. "The Jedi have healers who use the Force in healing, I think."

"Regardless of how it's done, they used it on us, and that's how they figured out what to fix," Ren sighed. "And the doctor found something. In our brains."

"Great," one of Gunny's men muttered. "Sounds… very promising, sir."

Ren agreed with a snort. "He couldn't say _what_ it was, though – just that it read as a foreign object, and we all have it in the exact same place, and he's pretty sure human brains shouldn't have this thing. And we've probably always had it."

"So it's some Kaminoan thing?" Yazoo asked, glancing at the others. "It's not exactly a secret that there's a lot of gimmicks involved in our creation, after all. Might be something to do with the accelerated growth maybe. Never mind our… programming."

"We're not _droids_ ," Strike said, giving him a hard look.

"I'm aware of that," Yazoo said, rolling his eyes. "But we're not exactly freeborn either, are we? We're made, Strike, to order. We might not come off of an assembly line but you can't really call the cloning facilities anything less than factories."

"There's no doubt that lot of tricky things are involved in our creation," Ren said sharply before they could continue. "But we're allowed some info about what goes into that creation process. We're all privy to our own medical histories. And this thing, well, it's not on my records."

There was a moment of silence as everyone thought about that.

"So," Gunny said, folding his arms. "Either Doctor Denzel is lying off his ass – or… someone is keeping this thing off our records?" he asked. "Why?"

"You tell me."

"With all due respect, sir," Yazoo's men said. "We know the cloning process isn't precisely perfect –and we're not _perfect_ clones anyway. There's some variation between us and the Progenitor. Whatever this thing is, it's probably nothing – some quirk involved in the cloning process maybe, too insignificant to be recorded."

Ren turned to him. "Your name, Trooper?"

"CT-1409, Mark, sir," the clone private answered promptly.

"Tell me, Mark – if this thing is big enough for _these_ people to detect with their strange abilities… why didn't the Kaminoans ever make any sort of notation about it on the files?"

"Maybe they did, and it was too insignificant for anyone to pay any mind to?"

"I'd pay mind to it," Strike said, frowning.

"As would I," Ren agreed. "A foreign object about the size of a fingertip your brain isn't exactly insignificant in either case."

"Yeah. Imagine being hit on the head and then having someone patch you up – like say, on a world like this – and they find this thing in your head?" Yazoo said, shaking his head. "What if it's vital to us somehow, and then some local doctor goes and removes it?"

Strike gave him a flat look. "You really think this thing is a _good_ thing?" he asked. "A vital thing we need?"

"Why else would it be there?"

"Oh, let me think…"

"In either case," Ren cut in quickly. "The doctor found it, wanted to know about it so that if it came down to it, he'd know to avoid it if any of our men landed in his clinic again. Problem was I couldn't exactly tell him anything about it because it was the first I'd heard of it."

He looked between the three sergeants and their troopers. "The doctor offered to do tests, to see what the thing is and… to remove it, if necessary," he said then, looking from one clone to another. "And Strife has already assured me that if it does come to it, he's good to finance the whole operation, in exchange for intel – most likely concerning the Republic."

"You sure we should go poking at this thing, sir?" Yazoo asked. "Shouldn't we prioritise the beacon so that we can get off this world?"

Ren frowned at that. "We should," he said. "And we will. But… that won't take all our efforts, will it? And I for one want to know what the thing is and I have a… suspicion that if we ever brought this up with the general…" he trailed off and no one there really needed him to continue anyway.

"Well…" Gunny started and then trailed off, glancing at Strike and Yazoo.

"Well I want to know what it is," Strike said. "If Strife's good to finance it and the doctor's willing to do the work, then hell, I volunteer as the test subject."

There were a few mumbled agreements between the men and a couple frowns. Yazoo and Mark exchanged an uneasy look, the only two who were obviously against the operation, but even they looked somewhat indecisive.

Ren had a feeling that were they clones from any other Regiment than the 209th, there'd be a whole lot more opposition. But they _were_ the 209 and if there was a regiment out there less loyal than they were, Ren sure as hell hadn't heard of them.

Not that he thought anyone had heard of the 209s anyway – except maybe in casual listings.

"Well," Yazoo said. "It can't hurt to have a look… while we build the transmitter."

"My thoughts exactly," Ren said with a dark, mirthless smile. "Strike, if you're still volunteering?"

"Happily, sir," the sergeant said sharply.

"Good. I don't know how long the tests take, but the doctor said he can take all the samples and pictures he needs to inside a day, so with any luck we might get it done today, or tomorrow at the latest," Ren said. "We'll ask Strife to patch us in with the doctor later. There's another thing to discuss before that though."

"There's something _else_ , sir?" Yazoo asked, grimacing.

"Nothing quite as complicated – I started with the worst," Ren said with a small grin. "Strife's informed me that there are other parties looking to… sponsor us, as it were. As far as I can tell, there are political entities here that will be trying to elbow their way into our good graces, in order to access our tech and knowledge – all of which is way ahead of what's locally available."

"And Strife's allowing it?" Gunny asked, eyebrows lifting.

"Strife's a neutral party," Ren shrugged. "As little as he seems like it, he has a sense of honour and he doesn't feel it's right for _us_ if he goes and restricts our access to other options. So he wants us to meet these other political parties, to make it fair for us."

"Well… that's new," Gunny said with a snort.

"It's a closed system – we're the first off-world visitors they've had, probably in centuries, maybe more. Easily long enough for them to have become utterly cut off from other planets," Ren shrugged. "We're a big deal around here."

"Great – so there's a political shit storm happening somewhere around here, because of us," Strike snorted.

"Yep. And we're in the middle of it," Ren agreed. "Strife's going to arrange us a meeting to hear what the other parties have to offer. Personally I feel like our best bet is with Strife – he's obviously a man with means and connections and so far he seems at least somewhat invested in our wellbeing."

"Strife's been straight with us so far," Gunny agreed.

"As far as we know anyway," Strike muttered. "The people here are… strange and they have strange powers. For all we know, Strife might be the worst of them. We have no basis of comparison."

"Precisely," Ren nodded. "So, it can't hurt to see what else there is available."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaand there i lost the momentum of this story. maybe eventually, but for now this fic goes to hiatus.


	13. Chapter 13

Cloud had to hand it to Hilda – she equipped her crew well. Gone were the old jumpsuits that Highwind's crew used to wear – no, the crewmembers wore uniforms these days. _Fancy_ uniforms. With all sort of lean lines and lapels and striking designs. And while the fit might've not been quite perfect – Cloud had to roll up the trouser legs a bit – he still had to say, the neat cut of the thing wasn't that bad. It wasn't leather, maybe, but hell, at least it wasn't a ShinRa infantry uniform. Those things sucked.

Hilda was less than impressed when he arrived at the bridge wearing the thing, though. "That's a _respectable_ uniform, you know. For respectable people. Whom other people _respect_."

"You saying I'm not respectable?" Cloud asked, snorting. "Do you have any idea how many people salute me when I walk by?"

"Longwinded brainwashing," she snorted right back at him. "Shame that uniform and I'll… do something about it," she added, waving a haphazard hand at him.

"Terrifying," Cloud said flatly. "Truly I have never felt such apprehension in my life. Look at me shaking in my boots. My _stolen_ boots. Which I stole."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Just gimme a fucking moment, you geezer – I'll figure out something that will embarrass even you."

"Trust me, little wing – if there's something embarrassing to be done out there I've already done it, and I probably even enjoyed it," Cloud answered and looked around. "Everything good here?"

"Define good. We're flying, we have fuel to stay up in air for the next thirty nine hours, all systems are working at optimal levels… We've all had to turn our phones off," Hilda answered with a shake of her head and gave him a look. "There's a lot of people out there who want to talk with you – and you seem to be conveniently out of reach. So now they call me. And my crew."

Cloud shrugged, uncaring. He'd turned the phone off right after meeting Reno – who had the habit of calling and texting incessantly until he got his way. Plus he had no intention of dealing with reporters just then. "Probably better that way," he said. "The clones situated okay?"

"We've handed in the hammocks, mattresses and blankets – some of them rigged up make shift beds from their own gurneys and some grates. They've all got places to sleep. Setting up a rotation for them to wash up too, though we've already had to put up a water ration – we're not equipped to deal with this many people needing a shower," Hilda said and turned to one of the monitors. "Thankfully the clones who were in full armour when they went swimming seem to do well with just gear maintenance. Still. We'll need a restock soon if you guys are going to stay for long. Not just for water, mind you – food's going to have to be rationed, too."

 "Hmm," Cloud hummed, thinking about it. If he got his way they wouldn't stay at Edge for long and then restocking wouldn't be an issue – as long as Hilda could get them to his place, he'd have everything settled for the clones. "What's the most time we can manage without landing?"

"Two days – then we'll need more water. Never mind fuel," she answered.

"Well. Hopefully it won't be an issue by then," Cloud said and then looked away as the doors to the bridge hissed open. Ren stepped in with his helmet under his arm. "Your men settled in okay?" Cloud asked.

Ren, if he thought anything about Cloud in a Highwind uniform, said nothing about it – his expression didn't even twitch. "Yes, sir, we'll make do. It's more comfortable than some other accommodations we've had to deal with," he said and glanced out of the front window. The Highwind was idly circling around Edge, and the city was on its right hand side, giving them a nice view of the area of decay around the city.

"If you and your men need anything, don't hesitate to tell the crew," Hilda said, looking the lieutenant over. "Cloud is being a paranoid bastard so we can't restock just now, but anything we can offer is yours."

"Thank you, ma'am, we'll do for now," Ren said and then turned to Cloud. "You intended to brief us on the topic of… interested parties."

"Yeah, sure," Cloud said with a shrug. "Now? Because you really don't need to hurry on their account – they can wait, trust me."

"The sooner the better, sir," Ren said with a slight, stiff smile.

"Alright then, after you Lieutenant," Cloud said and glanced at Hilda. "Keep us flying and if you see a helicopter, shoot it down with extreme prejudice. Especially if it's a Bank chopper."

"Piss off," she answered and with a little grin Cloud turned to follow Ren out of the bridge.

"Helicopter, sir?" the clone asked curiously.

"A small aircraft that gets its lift from rotors," Cloud shrugged. "They're faster and more manoeuvrable than airships, but can't carry as much weight or go as long distances. And the interested parties are known for using them."

"Right," Ren nodded thoughtfully. "You do not use any sort of rocket based thrusters then?"

"Not as such no – well, some of the newer airships have rocket thrusters for extra speed, but overall they're only used in emergency situations. Airships aren't really optimised for those speeds," Cloud said and dug out his phone from the pocket of his Highwind issues jumpsuit. "Anyone else coming to our little debrief?"

"My sergeants, Gunny, Strike, and Yazoo," Ren said with a nod and glanced at him. "We're not all expected to attend to the meeting, correct?"

"Well… our interested parties can expect whatever they damn well want. You don't have to comply any of their expectations," Cloud shrugged and flicked through the programs on his phone to get to his photos. "Bring everybody, bring nobody – it's really up to you guys."

Ren nodded, and they entered the meeting room. The Sergeants were already there, sitting down by the table – they stood up when Cloud and Ren entered, though it was hard to say which one they were standing for, Ren or Cloud.

"Alright," Cloud said, walking up to the video projector and tugging out a wire. "I'm going to give you the short and nasty of it – do you want recent Planet history to go with individual bios?" he asked while hooking the wire into his phone and turning the projector on. "It's not _precisely_ necessary information, but we all have long lived grudges that stem from what happened twenty five years ago."

Strike cleared his throat. "How long is the local year?" he asked. "And how long is the local day and hour?"

Cloud blinked at that, a little surprised – but really, he shouldn't have been. Planets, different orbits and rotations, right. "Our year is three hundred and fifty two days. A day is I think technically just a little over twenty four hours or something. And an hour is sixty minutes, a minute is sixty seconds, a second is how long it takes you to say airship. One airship, two airship, three airship and so on."

"So your year is sixteen days shorter than ours," Gunny mused. "Twenty five years for you would've been just under twenty four for us…"

"Oh I'm going to _love_ this," Cloud muttered. Maths wasn't really his thing. It was one of the many things he'd failed back at SOLDIER trials and he'd quite happily not looked back to it since. "Wait, how long is your week?" he then asked.

"Five days, a standard day is same as yours," Strike answered.

"Five. Okay – ours is seven," Cloud said, scratching at his neck and then walking to pull the projector screen down. So, when the clones said that it might take them a week to make the transmitter they meant five days, not seven. "Right. Are we all set for time then?"

"I think we've got it now, sir," Ren said, looking thoughtful as he sat down. "Concerning the recent history of this planet, how much of it should we know? From your previous comments I've gotten the bare bones impression of what happened, but I know I am missing some key details."

"Hm. Well, like I said, it's not precisely important – it's just that we all, every politically powerful party these days, we all started from there. I'll give you the quick and dirty of it, I think, better to be safe than sorry," Cloud shrugged and walked back to the projector and his phone. After flicking through his pictures, he turned the projector on – it projected a picture of Midgar onto the screen, as the city had been before the Meteor. "This is how Midgar used to look twenty five of our years ago – the old city that Edge circles now. It was ruled by ShinRa, the tyrannical corporation that pretty much ruled the Planet back then…"

He didn't dwell on what ShinRa had been at it's prime, that didn't really matter – just summarised how it had been shortly before it fell, corrupt and largely inept but by then far too powerful to topple over no matter how incompetent the head on it's overly massive body was. He brushed over the experiments, didn't bother to go over Sephiroth at all just said that one of ShinRa's biggest human experiments had gone mad, killed the former president and that it had started the snowball that had ended up avalanche.

The clones made for good students – they listened attentively, memorised everything and asked just the right questions. Cloud got the feeling it was part of how they'd been made. As if the clones and their Grand Army wasn't bad enough, now it turned out someone had given them all near perfect memory. They might not be enhanced like SOLDIERs were, but as far as simple military prowess went… that was fucking terrifying.

"I dunno how it is with other worlds, other planets. But ours is…" Cloud trailed off, not sure how to summarise the WEAPONS. In the end he decided not to, it wasn't important. "Anyway. Lots of shit happened, you could even call it a war between ShinRa and the Planet in general. It was a very interesting year for everyone and we all almost died. In the end, Midgar was destroyed by an artificial meteor summoned by our lovely madman, and we were all saved by… I guess you could call it a conscious immune response from the Planet. Anyway, that's how ShinRa fell."

The clones stared at him. "Right," Strike said slowly. "What?"

"How do you summon a meteor?"

"With great and terrible powers," Cloud shrugged. "It doesn't matter now, it won't happen again. It was something of a one-off."

"And a conscious immune response from the planet?" Yazoo asked, running a hand over his chin.

"Also a great power – just not as terrible," Cloud said and shook his head. "It's all very complicated and confusing and doesn't really matter in this situation. Shall we move on to our interested parties?"

"Yes, lets," Ren said and leaned forward. "You were part of ShinRa yourself – I suspect it was the same with others?"

"Yes, it was," Cloud agreed and with ShinRa and its fall from power – and indeed, existence – summarised, he moved on to their individual interested parties. "Let's start with Reeve," he said and flicked through his pictures to a recent one. It showed Reeve in the Seventh Heaven, talking with Barret who was almost off the screen – he had a wine glass in hand and a smug look on his face because Reeve was a generally smug bastard.

"This is Reeve Tuesti," Cloud said. "He's the leader and the founder of the WRO - the World Regenesis Organization. He was one of the executives of ShinRa before of its fall, he was the head of the Department of Urban Development. He designed most of Midgar and had hand in designing other ShinRa cities and structures – and while he was one of the less corrupt leaders of ShinRa, that doesn't mean he wasn't at least a little bit corrupt."

"I think I saw him at the clinic," Ren said, frowning. "Weren't you talking with him in the garden, sir?"

"Yes, I was," Cloud agreed with a sigh. "He's an asshole and sadly also a friend. Anyway, Reeve and through him the WRO is our interested party number one. The WRO started as organisation of do-gooders – they tried to undo some of the damage ShinRa caused, tried to help people, do your usual general good things. Back when they started, though, it hadn't been that long since the last of our disasters and a lot of people wanted to do good – they wanted to be better than they used to be, so a lot of people joined in early on and the WRO got very powerful very fast. It wasn't really the best thing that could've happened to them."

The WRO had been a bit twisted over the years. It didn't help that a lot of it's early funding had came from Rufus ShinRa and pretty much all of it's early employees had been former ShinRa people. What had started out as an honest bid for a better future had gotten agendas – and all those agendas had been spotted with the individual agendas of individual workers. It was a mess writhing under the banner of a Better Future for Everyone and no matter how Reeve had tried to make it better… it just wasn't feasible. Now days the WRO hoarded old ShinRa tech and raced to develop new tech and while they _technically_ didn't benefit from the release of that tech back to the public, they damn well didn't suffer from it either.

"The WRO isn't bad, really. They do help a lot of people – they build houses, they fix roads, they fight monsters, they offer aid, they do charity work," Cloud shrugged. "Problem is that they do a lot of other things on the side, too. And they're basically that moral busybody who will help you regardless of if you want their help or not, because they think they know better. If it was anyone other than Reeve heading the WRO, it would basically be ShinRa point two, just under nicer wraps."

"Right," Strike said and leaned back. "I'm sorry, sir, I can't quite get read on this – do you hate this Tuesti or not?"

Cloud groaned at that. "I… don't… actually hate him," he admitted very, very begrudgingly. "He's a smug manipulative bastard with his nose all up everybody's business, but… he could be worse. And he's not stupid. He's idealistic and has his own agendas, but he's not an idiot and he does honestly have the best for everybody in mind."

"Thank you, sir," Strike said, arching his eyebrows at him. "That clarifies it right up."

"Piss off," Cloud sighed. "If he tells you the building is on fire it probably is, but if he asks to use your gun to fix it, he probably just wants to steal your gun. Alright?"

Strike smothered a laugh at that.

"Moving right along," Cloud said and then quickly backtracked. "Actually, back to Reeve for a moment," he said and flicked through pictures until he got to a picture of Cait Sith. "This thing," he said and motioned to the screen, "is Cait Sith. He's a semi autonomous robot sometimes controlled by Reeve – it's his spy and how he deals with shit at long distance. Reeve doesn't use Cait Sith much anymore, but he does sometimes and if you see him, know that it's Reeve behind him."

"You have AI?" Gunny asked, eying the furry robot.

"And droids," Strike muttered, scowling

"Cait Sith is the only one of his kind, really. Reeve made him before ShinRa fell – and it's one of the few techs he's not released to the public. Which just says what a bastard he is – wanting to keep a monopoly on Cait Sith," Cloud shrugged. "Right. _Now_ moving right along to this douche."

He flicked through the pictures again, until he got to the next interested party. An elderly man with white hair, sitting in a wheel chair and scowling at something off screen. "This is Rufus Shinra," Cloud said. "The former president of ShinRa Electric Power Company and current president of the Bank of Midgar, and the head of Turks, pretty much. He's an asshole and I hate him with _actual_ _hatred_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not abandoned.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters will be short, Cloud will be a grump, there will be a multitude of OCs and I have very little actual plot planned. Post Advent Children, Pre-Revenge of the Sith, and Dirge of Cerberus never happened because I don't really care. You have been warned.


End file.
